A lot of people are more interested in planning their vacation trips rather than estate planning. They think that estate planning is only for the wealthiest in the world. But these people couldn’t be more wrong. Estate planning is an essential plan that should be included in everyone’s life. It is all about the safety and security of your family members even when you are not around. Thus, this article answers the obvious questions about why you should have an estate plan.

What Is Estate Planning?

Estate planning is the overall transfer of your assets to your loved ones. In estate planning, you can decide about the distribution of your investments among your loved ones. As a result, they can still be finically secure and independent when you are no longer around.

Why Do You Need an Estate Plan?

Here comes the obvious question of this article. We know that people are struggling with this question, and in the end, they think they don’t need an estate plan. But that is ultimately a wrong conception. There are so many reasons why you need to have an estate plan. Some of these reasons are mentioned in this article.

Estate Planning Allows You to Make Your Own Choices

Through estate planning, you can choose who gets what. You can easily divide your assets according to your own choice. The decision goes to the court in the absence of any estate plan. The court chooses who will get what amount of your assets. And this decision might not be in sync with yours. Most of the time, the family members start contesting regarding the asset distribution. This makes the relationship within the family very bitter. Thus, it would help to avoid such issues if you had proper estate planning.

It Will Protects Your Children

With people having children, estate planning can be of great help. Imagine that you do not have an estate plan and die suddenly due to an accident. What happens to the future of your children? How are they going to survive? To avoid such situations, you need to have a strong estate plan that will ensure that even after your death, your children will be financially independent and won’t be facing any troubles whatsoever.

You Can Reduce Your Taxes

A lot of your money can get eaten up due to taxes on your property. This can be easily avoided by having a good estate plan. You can consult your lawyers and financial counselors regarding minimizing the tax. Eventually, if you develop a healthy-structured will and estate plan, your heirs can be protected from paying this massive amount of taxes. Most couples go for this option to mitigate taxes.

You Can Continue Your Legacy

Estate planning is all about protecting the things and the people you value the most. By making a proper estate plan, you will not only take care of your loved ones, but at the same time, you can ensure the safety of all of your belongings. The assets that you have built through your hard-earned money need to be protected no matter what.

It Will Help in Business

For people running a company, a minor factor or a big organization. Estate planning is a must. This company needs to continue even after you are not around. Thus, you need to have an estate plan stating the power of attorney of your company so that after you are gone, your company is well taken care of. In the absence of any will or estate plan, your company might be seized by the government or fall into the wrong hands. Thus, it would help if you had proper planning for your business.

It Helps in Charity

It is not necessary that all of your hard-earned money has to go to your loved ones only. You can even donate an amount to charity if you want to. This can be done quickly using an estate plan. You can include your favorite charity in your will in your trust and the share of assets you want to donate them.

Conclusion

Whether rich or poor, estate planning must be a top priority. And the best time to do it is now!

Business is one such field where people are busy and have no time for themselves. In the line of business, you think about your business projects before even thinking about yourselves. This is why most people in business don’t have a proper plan for their business. They plan for the tasks and the expansions, but they forget to consider the situation when they won’t be there. Who would take care of their business? How would the business run after their death? This thought never occurs to a person in business.

Research says that 30% of business owners do not have a business plan, and if they do, it has not been updated yet. This is an unfortunate scenario in this respect as business people are the ones who need estate planning more than anyone. Thus, this article is here to help all such business people to make the proper choices during estate planning.

Why Is Estate Planning Required?

The great empire you have built all these years through hard work and persistence needs to be protected when you are gone; this is one of the primary causes as to why estate planning is required. There needs to be someone or a group who can hold on to your legacy and take your company or organization to a new height. This can only be done through estate planning.

Also, if you have children, you need to provide them with financial stability even when you are not there. So giving the company assets to the guardian (in case they are minors) will be the right choice.

Estate planning is all about providing financial security to your family after you are gone. This is why whether you are in business or not, you need to have an estate plan to better your family.

Tips for Estate Planning In Business

Have A Will

A will is a proper documentation that will include all your decisions that must be fulfilled after your death. There are some elements that must be considered in a will. First is the distribution of your assets. It would help if you clearly mentioned how you want to divide your assets and among whom. Also, you need to decide who gets the company shares and in what percentage regarding your company. Finally, if you want to pass the company to another person, you need to do that through a will.

The second thing you need to consider in your essential estate planning is having a power of attorney and a health care attorney. Come up with some mental issues and cannot make decisions of your own. Your power of attorney can take all the financial decisions on your behalf, and the health care attorney will be able to make medical decisions on your behalf. This is a very critical choice because you need to have the most trustworthy people in your life to do this job.

You Plan for Tax Efficiency

Now the government has tax laws that make you pay a small amount of tax before your assets or properties are handed over to your beneficiaries. Therefore, you need to plan your decisions in the right way so that you have to pay minimum taxes to the government. Of course, it would help if you were in constant touch with your lawyers and financial assistance regarding such decisions. But with a well-structured estate plan, you can come up with the best taxation plan possible.

Manage Family-Owned Business

Family-owned businesses cause a lot of issues in estate planning. For example, if you have two children, there is always a chance of a fight between the two regarding asset distribution. So before making the will, you need to carefully give a thought about what can be the repercussions of your decisions. It would help if you had a constant financial counselor guide you throughout.

Also, it would help if you kept in mind that no matter what, the family business must be kept within the bloodline as well.

Final Note

Estate planning in business is tough and tricky, but it can be done with proper guidance. We hope that this article will help you make your estate plan for business. Call us today to speak with an experienced Estate Planning lawyer to see how you and your business can benefit from proper estate planning.