Estate Plan Updates?

People often ask about the frequency with which their estate plans should be reviewed or updated.

It is best to review an estate plan at least every five years so that documents can be updated to incorporate any changes in circumstances as well as the ever-changing law.

There are a number of situations that may indicate a need for new or amended estate planning documents, including:

• Changes in health
• Changes in marital status
• Births and deaths
• Changes of mind with respect to a beneficiary, agent, executor, trustee or guardian
• Property acquisition or relocation to another state
• Changes in business interest or wealth

Addiitional Questions About Your Estate Plan

In our previous post we shared three important questions about estate plans that people often don't consider.

Here are some additional questions, all of which are relevant to estate planning and can be addressed in your estate plan:

• What happens if you all die in plane crash, where will your assets go?
• What can you do to protect assets for your disabled child?
• Can your son who you haven’t spoken to in years contest your Will?
• Who will take care of your dog after you die?
• Where should you keep your estate planning documents?
• When do you want life support to be pulled?

3 Important Estate Planning Questions

When meeting with families to discuss their estate plan, there are certain questions that many had not thought about or that they didn't consider at all. Although the thoughts of the following questions may be a bit unsettling, thinking about them can assist you with the creation of your estate plan:

• Who do you want to be the guardian over your minor children if both parents should die?
• If you have children from a prior marriage, and if your spouse remarries, can he or she change your estate plan, what happens to the inheritance for your kids?
• If your child has a problem with drugs, what can you do to protect his or her share of the inheritance?

New Surrogate Decision Making Law in NH

New Hampshire now has a law that allows surrogate decision making with respect to health care issues.

The purpose of the law is to ensure that health care decisions can be made in a timely manner by a person’s next of kin or loved one without involving court action. 

Basically, the new law establishes a surrogate decision maker for health care decisions when there is no valid advanced directive or guardian in place.

There are some additional things to think about with respect to the legislation as well, which you can review in our recent newsletter.

The Advantages of a Revocable Trust

People often ask about the advantage of a revocable trust for probate avoidance.

There are several advantages. For example, when it is established and properly funded, it ensures a consistent estate plan. Too often, when people rely on designated beneficiaries and joint ownership, the result is a plan that is skewed unintentionally toward one or another beneficiary. The reason for this is that if you have multiple beneficiary designations, and you change one but forgot to change the others, you may create a different distribution than the one you had in mind. 

By contrast, with a revocable trust, the change can be made once (by means of an amendment to the trust) and this will affect all assets.

Read more: http://www.curtinlawoffice.com/typical-questions.htm

New Surrogate Decision Making Law in NH Part 2: Be Proactive

In our previous post we summarized the details associated with a new surrogate decision-making law in NH.

This new law is helpful because it does provide for an alternative, other than court, to family members and friends of a loved one who has not executed his or her health care power of attorney.

Nonetheless, the best option is being proactive. 

Being proactive means executing a health care power of attorney when you are competent, in which you choose the agent (s), you want to act on your behalf when you are no longer able to make health care decisions for yourself. 

New Surrogate Decision Making Law in NH

New Hampshire now has a law that allows surrogate decision making with respect to health care issues.

The purpose of the law is to ensure that health care decisions can be made in a timely manner by a person’s next of kin or loved one without involving court action. Basically, the new law establishes a surrogate decision maker for health care decisions when there is no valid advanced directive or guardian in place.

There are some things to think about with respect to the legislation.

• When choosing a surrogate decision maker, the physician or APRN must follow a certain priority list. Your choice for a health care agent to make health care decisions for you may be different than the person on top of the priority list.
• It should also be noted that if your children are the surrogate decision makers and they can’t agree, then the majority of them who do agree rule. However, if one of them initiates a guardianship, then none of your children will be recognized as a decision maker for you.
• Also, the authority of the surrogate decision maker terminates after 90 days. The law doesn’t say what happens after that…