How Your Family Situation Affects Your Plans For Your Legacy

Oklahoma City living trust lawyers can provide you with assistance in determining if you should create a trust in order to provide for your family and protect your legacy.  Your personal family situation and the nature of the assets you own will determine whether creating a trust is the right course of action for you. Your family situation will also determine the type of trust you need to create and the other legal tools you will need to make use of when making your legacy plan. 

Parman & Easterday has extensive experience helping people at all income levels and with all different amounts of assets to make their plans for the future. If you want to ensure your wealth is as secure as possible and your loved ones will be provided for no matter what happens to you, you should give us a call today.

How Does Your Family Situation Impact Your Legacy Plans?

There are a number of different ways your specific family situation can affect the legacy plans you need to make. Some of the key ways your situation can be impacted include the following:

• If you are the family breadwinner: If your family is depending upon your income, you will need to make sure the inheritance you provide to them is sufficient to help them maintain their quality of life. You may wish to purchase a life insurance policy. You may also wish to use a living trust to make sure that your loved ones who depend upon you for support are able to receive their inheritance quickly. The probate process takes a long time and your family could be in dire financial straits by the time the process is complete and assets transfer to new owners. A living trust could allow for assets to transfer through the trust administration process, which means your loved ones would inherit more quickly.
• If you are not married and have a large estate: If you have a large estate and you need to pass assets on to anyone other than a spouse, you will need to consider whether your estate will owe estate tax after you pass on. As of 2018, estate tax is owed if your estate exceeds $5.6 million in value.
• If you have irresponsible heirs or beneficiaries: If you want to leave assets to irresponsible heirs or beneficiaries but you are worried they will squander the inheritance that you have provided to them, you should work with an experienced attorney to make a spendthrift trust. A spendthrift trust can allow you to put a trusted person in charge of managing estate assets and providing income for your heirs or beneficiaries in accordance with instructions in your trust document.
• If you have a disabled loved one: You may wish to provide an inheritance to your disabled relative to enhance his/her quality of life after you are gone. Unfortunately, you could cause a loss of access to means-tested benefits like Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) if you simply transfer assets directly. You can use a special needs trust to make sure the assets are managed appropriately for your disabled loved one and that there is no loss of access to means-tested government benefits as a result of an inheritance.
• If you are leaving money to a minor: You may wish to use a trust so you can control who will manage the money until the child is an adult and so you will have more control over what the money is used for and when the child receives it.

These are just a few of many examples of how your specific family situation can impact the process of creating a legacy plan. Parman & Easterday can also work with you to identify other circumstances within your family that could affect the ways in which you transfer your wealth or the plans you need to make for the future.

Getting Help from Oklahoma City Living Trust Lawyers

Oklahoma City living trust lawyers at Parman & Easterday can provide the comprehensive help you need to make the right legacy plan based on your assets, your family, and your goals for the future. We can work with you to identify your desires regarding taking care of your loved ones, preserving your business, and providing funding for causes you care about. Our legal team will then help you to identify the tools you need to use to make a legacy plan that works for you.

To find out more about the assistance that we can provide, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call today at  (405) 843-6100 or contact us online at any time to get your personalized legacy plan underway.