The Surprising Costs of NOT Having an Estate Plan

Most families have immediate concerns that they are juggling and navigating through every day. Particularly in tough economic times, it can be hard to invest in processes – such as building an estate plan – that you may not fully understand. However, the importance of an estate plan cannot be overstated! It is not just about preparing for a distant, inevitable future. Building a solid estate plan helps you to maintain a greater level of control of your hard-earned assets, ensures that your loved ones are taken care of in a way that you see fit, and can save you and your loved ones a lot of time and money in the future.

This article is going to discuss some of the potential costs and consequences that can come from NOT building a comprehensive estate plan.

Potential Costs and Consequences

There is no way to discuss every potential issue that can arise when an individual has not built a comprehensive estate plan, but here are some issues and scenarios to think over.

• Family Disputes

When someone passes away with no directives on how they want their estate distributed, one of the largest tolls that hits can be that on the family relationships. Even the most congenial families will inevitably have more than one person who wants something – even an otherwise low value item that holds sentimental value. Or legacy items such as a wallet passed down from a great grandparent. A feeling of being slighted, taken advantage of, or general misunderstandings between siblings and other family members can create lasting rifts. Establishing a directive for how your estate is to be handled and distributed can help avoid this.

• Probate Expenses

A lack of an estate plan means that your estate will have to go through a significant amount of probate. Probate is the legal process of validating a decedent’s last will and testament, if one exists, and distributing the estate’s assets. Tennessee probate can be very complex and going through the process can cost a lot of money. Probate can also take a long time, and delay the ability of your heirs to take ownership of the assets you wish to leave behind. Establishing a solid estate plan can help to minimize the role that probate plays in the distribution of your estate.

• Loss of Control

You may know that you want your old truck to go to your nephew, who has always helped you work on it. But the law doesn’t. Without an estate plan detailing your wishes, the courts have to fall back on legal guidelines of how assets are to be distributed. This means you do not control who will inherit what, and the outcome of the preset legal guidelines might be far from what you would have wanted. This is particularly concerning for business owners, who have others’ financial wellbeing tied to the business and how it continues to operate and who is in charge.

• Financial Uncertainty

Your family could face unexpected tax consequences, creditor claims, etc. that can occur when an estate enters probate with no established estate plan. There are many financial issues that can be mitigated with estate planning.

Contact Fort, Holloway & Rogers

You do not have to have everything figured out before you take the first steps in building an estate plan. Wherever you are in your estate planning journey, reach out to the experienced Franklin estate planning & probate lawyers at Fort, Holloway & Rogers. They can help you build a plan tailored to your needs.

Source:

tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/docs/probate_manual_final.pdf