The Value of an Estate Plan Created by an Estate Planning Attorney

With properly prepared estate planning documents, you will benefit yourself and your family or beneficiaries, both emotionally and financially. At a minimum, you should have an advance health care directive, also known as a living will. This is a document that appoints an agent and provides guidelines for your agent, with respect to your healthcare in the event you’re unable to act.

You also need a power of attorney. This document designates an agent to take care of your financial affairs during your lifetime. You also need a will, which directs the administration of your estate following your death.

If you become incapacitated without a power of attorney and/or a living will, it’s likely that a guardianship proceeding will be required to appoint a guardian to handle your financial and personal affairs. A guardianship
proceeding can be expensive, because of the appointment of an independent attorney for the alleged incapacitated person. There needs to be an attorney for the guardian. Two doctors are also required to examine the alleged incapacitated person and prepare affidavits for the court. All these people need to be paid.

If you have a will, it’s more likely that your assets will be disposed of in the way you want and administered by the person you selected, instead of by the intestacy laws. Every state has its own laws that determine who inherits the deceased’s property, when that person dies without a will. It sounds like a simple process, but there are legal terms and specific rules of intestate succession that must be followed.

Guardianship proceedings or months of private pay in a nursing home cost far more than the fees charged by experienced estate planning or elder law attorney. The anxiety and stress created by do-it-yourselfers, when it comes to estate planning, can’t be measured in dollars alone.

Reference: nj.com (June 3, 2018) “Why an estate planning attorney is worth the money”