Seattle Estate Attorney

With busy lives, important things sometimes slip into the “I will get to it” bin. One of the things that often keep getting put off is estate planning. Maybe this is because it is not pleasant to think about our own mortality, or, perhaps your estate is not large and you feel the no urgency to put it in writing. Unfortunately, there is an urgent need to look into a Seattle Estate Attorney.

Estate planning is more than who gets what when you pass on. When planning your estate, your estate attorney will encourage you to make out an advanced medical directive and appoint someone you trust and can count on to grant a durable power of attorney to. The advanced directive has your instructions for how you want your health care decisions made in the event that you are unable to do so. The durable power of attorney only lasts for the time you are incapacitated. The moment you can make your own decisions,, the durable power of attorney is no longer in effect.

If you are a small business owner and become incapacitated due to illness or injury who will make your business decisions? You might not want this to be a family member who does not understand the business, instead, it may be a trusted employee. If so, the only way to make sure that this is what happens is to work with your estate attorney on a durable power of attorney that grants your trusted employee decision-making responsibility for your business. It too is only effective during your period of inability to make decisions, once you are again able to make decisions the durable power of attorney is no longer valid.

Now that you understand the importance of making provisions if you become ill or injured,, it is logical that you also make them if the illness or injury is fatal. Estate planning is critical to family owned small businesses. Within it you can put what you envision to be the succession plan for your business. Perhaps your children are too young to enter the business. You can retain family ownership but in your written estate plan specify who you want to run it and for how long. It might be your brother-in-law who works for you. He will be ready to retire in 12 years and your child will be old enough to have finished school and take over the business. This works well, except if your child doesn’t want to do this.

This is where estate planning is especially useful. Many small business owners set up what is known as a living trust. It is faster to implement than a will and mitigates inheritance taxes. Returning to our example, the living trust can either sell the business and keep the profits for those who receive money from the trust, or can continue to own the business and hire an outsider to manage it.

Estate planning  by a well qualified Estate Attorney Seattle makes what seem to be complicated situations, such as domestic partnerships, succession issues and other important matters, easy to manage after you are gone. It truly is urgent that you finally take care of this matter. If you have already implemented an estate plan, it is equally important that each year you review it with your estate attorney to make sure that any changes you want to make are incorporated into your estate plan.