How To Prepare Estate Planning Documents
Video Transcript
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
What type of documents do you want somebody to bring to you in their first meeting?
Andrew Dósa – Estate Planning Attorney – Tacoma WA and Oakland, CA
Sure.
The thing that I will do is send out an estate planning questionnaire. And it will ask those three basic questions.
What do you have? And it will break it down. Do you have bonds? Do you have checking accounts? Do you have investments? Do you have retirement accounts? Do you have life insurance? Do you have checking accounts? Do you have property?
And then it will say, who would you trust to manage these things for you when you’re not able to? That’s the representative person we’re talking about. What you have, who you trust.
Now, the third, of course, is what would you like to do with your distribution plan? So, I have one couple; they have no children. They’re both a little older than I am. So they have relatives that they want to have the distribution plan provide for, right? And that’s how that will work.
If clients don’t have all the answers to all of the questions that I give, I will say there’s a shortcut. And that is, if you have, say, five or six or seven checking accounts or investment accounts or index funds or things like that, and you don’t want to dig up all the numbers, what you can do is just get the last statement that you received from the bank or the financial institution.
Then we can come in, look at those numbers, and do some estimating about what your present value might be based on what that last statement shows.
Clients don’t need to show me their deeds, because I have a connection at a title company and I can get the title deeds—the most current title—so I know what, for the property, how it’s held. I can find out when they received it, which might be important for valuation purposes—might or might not. It does for capital gains purposes if they want to sell. But those are examples.
If you bring a copy of your checking account, I may not need to know all the things that you spend your money on, but at least I know what the balance is. So that may be helpful.
And then, if they have a life insurance policy— but mostly it’s just: who is it that I need to contact if I need to get that information if there’s a problem in the future?
Okay.
And then contact information for their family and friends and children and things like that.
Andrew Dósa – Estate Planning Attorney – Tacoma WA and Oakland, CA
Here are more videos from Attorney Andrew Dósa
More videos in Civil Law
Video – Divorce Mediation Attorney Explains The Recent Changes In New York Uncontested Divorce Forms
Video – Divorce Mediation Attorney Explains The Recent Changes In New York Uncontested Divorce Forms
Video – Criminal Defense Attorney Stuart Kirchick Explains Why He Is Different From Other Attorneys!
Video – Attorney Spencer Freeman Explains How Soon Should A Personal Injury Attorney File A Lawsuit?
Video – Attorney Spencer Freeman Explains Why Very Few Arrests Go All The Way To Trial. Why Happens?
