Estate Planning

Creating an Estate Plan during your life is essential to ensure that your assets end up in the right hands when you die. Bonahoom and Bonahoom specializes in advising and helping you create the Estate Plan that suits your life.

Estate Planning is the process of analyzing your assets, while you are living, to develop a plan that will meet your overall needs and objectives both during your life and after you die. Some objectives are to distribute assets according to your wishes, to minimize the costs and expenses of estate administration and to reduce or minimize taxation associated with the transfer of your assets. A large portion of estate planning needs to be done in conjunction with financial planning and investment. The financial planning and investment is not an area that we at Bonahoom & Bonahoom LLP advise on, however, in recognizing the interrelationship between the legal end of the estate planning and the financial planning end, we in most cases, will recommend that we work with your financial planner or introduce you to a financial planner who will work with us to best meet your needs.

Estate planning when properly handled will give you the piece of mind to know that all of your personal needs and objectives and met and that distributions will get to the individuals when you want them to and in the manner that you choose. Estate planning also takes into consideration who will handle your overall estate in the event that you become incapacitated and who will be in charge of your estate administration after you have passed away. Estate plans can vary widely from simply leaving assets to family members, to very complex plans utilizing trusts for the benefit of individuals and/or charity (often times not only for charitable purposes but to save significantly in estate taxes, income taxes and create retirement streams of income for the individual planning their estate). Additional estate planning must be integrated with business succession plans for those of you that own businesses. Plans should also address issues concerning minor children, disabled children, second marriage situations, and any other concerns which may affect your overall estate. There is only one thing for certain about estate planning; that is if you have no estate plan, the state has one for you, and it typically is not the estate plan that you want, and will in most cases cost more in taxes and administration expenses. Estate plans should be considered very carefully with estate planning attorneys who work in the are regularly.