Our Services
Smith Estate Planning offers a variety of services for our clients to ensure they have an effective legal strategy in place.
Wills
It’s essential that your family and assets are taken care of after you’re gone. This document ensures that your family, friends, and other beneficiaries know how you want your assets and property distributed and can minimize stress. Wills are the foundation of an estate plan. The primary role of this document is to dictate what happens to your assets when you pass away or are unable to manage them. In addition, this document can assign assets to persons or entities, appoint guardians to minor children, and prevent assets from being separated among default beneficiaries of the state.
At The Smith Estate Planning Group, we offer high-quality estate planning expertise to our clients. This expertise includes various legal matters involving wills, including:
• Drafting a Will
• Modifying an Existing Will
• Legal Disputes Over Wills
• Probating Wills
• Probate Without a Will
Trusts
Trusts are a very useful tool and flexible tool in estate planning. This document allows someone to dictate how certain assets are managed and distributed. This may include providing income for people with disabilities, providing care for children and family members, reducing or avoiding probate and taxation on your estate, and protecting assets from Medicaid.
Types of Trusts:
• Special Needs Trust
• Living Trust
• Testamentary Trust
• Domestic Asset Protection Trust
• Specialized Trust
• Irrevocable Trust
Who can benefit from having a Trust? Individuals who…
• Have Children or Grandchildren
• Own a house or real estate
• Own a business
• Have assets (for example: investments, bank accounts, or retirement plans), or
• Have a spouse
Medical Powers of Attorney
Choosing a Medical Power of Attorney helps ensure that the right person makes decisions on your behalf when you aren’t able to. Your Attorney-in-Fact, or Patient Advocate, may make decisions in your name and for your benefit, including but not limited to your care, custody, medical treatment, and mental health decisions.
Durable Power of Attorney (Financial)
A power of attorney is a legal document that gives one person (such as a relative, lawyer, or friend) the authority to make legal, medical, or financial decisions for another person. There are different types of Powers of Attorney. A Durable Power of Attorney remains in effect until the person who grants it dies or cancels it. It does not need to be renewed over time. Powers of attorney that are not durable are in place for a specific amount of time or for a specific event.
Springing Power of Attorney
A Springing Power of Attorney becomes effective at a future time and only when a specific event occurs, such as the incapacitation of the principal or a triggering event that occurs while the principal is out of the country and unable to act upon it. This type of power of attorney can be durable or non-durable and can encompass any number of affairs the principal wants to assign to the agent.
Estate Planning
You can protect your family and finances during your lifetime and after your passing with an estate plan. This is an important decision to protect you and your loved ones, no matter your net worth. A thorough and carefully drafted estate plan by Smith Estate Planning is made for your specific needs.
Medicaid Planning
Planning for Medicaid can help you get your finances in order by protecting your assets from the nursing home. This can help alleviate the worry about getting the care you or a loved one needs.
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