Being named executor of someone’s estate is often viewed as an honor. It means the person who created the will trusted you to handle their affairs and carry out their wishes after death. But once the process begins, many executors discover that the role involves far more than distributing belongings or closing a few bank accounts.
Owning a new home brings new responsibilities and new opportunities to ensure that your estate plan reflects your life today. From reviewing how your home is titled to checking that your plans for loved ones are clear, we can help you take practical steps to protect what matters most.
Adopting a stewardship mindset, as in stewarding family wealth, shifts conversations about estate planning and inheritance from consumption to long-term preservation, from entitlement to responsibility, and from instant gratification to legacy. In estate planning, raising stewards rather than mere beneficiaries can reshape how families approach intergenerational wealth.
If postsecondary education is in your family’s future, the following tools can be excellent additions to your estate plan to help provide for education needs.
Losing a loved one is challenging enough without added complications. One way you can take some of the pain out of administering your estate is by preparing a death box, also called a death binder, next-of-kin box, or legacy folder. It serves as a centralized place to organize important information and documents in a productive, practical way, ensuring that all necessary paperwork is kept in a single location and that those who need it know where to find it.
In estate planning, future problems are exactly what family meetings are intended to avoid. The longer such discussions are delayed, the greater the likelihood that they never take place and that unresolved family issues will rear their ugly heads when money changes hands.
A medical power of attorney is a crucial component of your estate plan that allows you to designate a trusted individual (your agent) to make healthcare choices on your behalf if necessary. It is essential to provide this person with clear, documented guidance regarding your medical preferences so that they can confidently carry out your wishes.
There are many ways to add color to your estate plan—ways that help paint a true-to-life picture of who you are within the standard planning canvas.
For many families, traditional services offer comfort and continuity; for others, a conventional funeral may feel disconnected from the life being honored. In addition to options such as cremation, more Americans are exploring memorial alternatives that include celebrations of life and even living funerals. Whatever your preferences, you may wish to plan for your memorial services well ahead of time.
The overall rate of estate planning in the United States is low, with less than one-quarter of Americans having a basic will. Within those already low numbers, men are more likely than women to have formal estate plans. This disparity is due not simply to differences in income or asset levels but also to timing, priorities, and the roles men and women tend to occupy over the course of their lives. Closing the estate planning gap may be addressed at an individual level through education, conversations, and professional guidance.