Consider Your Assets For Your Estate Plan

Associate Colin Flannigan regularly advises clients in the practice areas of wills, trusts, estate and incapacity planning, estate administration, residential and commercial real estate, property matters, corporate transactions, and business law.

In this episode of Legal Matters, Colin discusses the estate plan and how it's more than just a Will. Yes, the Will is part of it, but what about your assets, and which ones should you consider?

Transcript:

An estate plan is much more than just a Will. An estate plan is how everything works together.

When creating your estate plan, your Will will be part of it, but one of the things you'll want to consider is what type of assets you own. That's going to include the different types of assets and how you own them — for example, the assets in your name alone or with multiple owners. One of the starting points is to decide what you would want to happen to the specific assets and to whom are they supposed to go? Can there be assets passed outside of the will, or will your Will govern them?

For options passing outside of your Will, this could be the way you hold the registration or if it's a type of asset that allows you to have a designated beneficiary. When making these types of decisions, the tax implications are important to consider to make sure you get the right advice.

Also, you might want to consider whether specific assets need a type of trust declaration to ensure that if it does pass outside of your estate, what will happen to the beneficial ownership.

So, when making changes to your assets in the future. You should also remember that this will impact your entire estate plan, so don't just review your Will but your estate plan — as a whole.