White Plains Estate Planning Lawyer

A last will and testament is the legal document that allows the executor you named in your will to carry out your stated final wishes such as administering your assets and personal property. Other objectives many people commonly worry about can also be laid out and addressed in a will.

Some of these objectives include the following:

• Determining guardianship of minor children
• Minimizing estate-related taxation and administration expenses
• Determining how an estate’s property is disposed of or apportioned amongst loved ones
• Determining funeral and burial arrangements

Guardianship

If you have minor children or other dependents in your care, legal guardianship might be the most important issue for you to address. You can use your will to designate a legal guardian to care for minor children in your place should you unexpectedly pass away.

Without making such arrangements, you run the risk of the court determining a legal guardianship arrangement with persons who you may not prefer or even wish to care for your children.

Minimizing Estate Taxes & Administration Costs

The arrangements you make in your will and your overall estate plan can also help you minimize your estate’s exposure to unnecessary taxation and lower the cost of administrating your estate. This is important because it can mean preserving as much of your estate’s wealth as possible, allowing it to pass on to the next generation of your family.

Disposition of Estate Property

Most people are very familiar with the property aspect of wills. A will is essentially a roadmap you leave your loved ones as to how you want your property to be distributed or dealt with upon your death. As part of this process, you choose a person to implement the desires you set forth in your will. This person is named an executor or executrix. When you create a will, you can state who you wish to inherit property (or not), specific gifts of property you wish to make, such as an amount of money, specific items, or a combination of things. Alternatively, you can provide for your property to be sold and the proceeds to be allocated amongst loved ones. These are just a few examples of how you can address your property or assets within your will.

Making arrangements for the disposition of your assets and property is important because by dying without a will, you might unintentionally leave those out of an inheritance who you would otherwise have wished to provide one. This is because of what is commonly referred to laws of intestate succession, which determine who will inherit an estate in a pre-determined order of priority determined by the state. These laws often only account for a person’s closest relatives (spouses, children, siblings, parents), which can leave other important people in your life left unaccounted for.

If having control over exactly who you want to inherit property and what they should inherit is important to you, you need a will to accomplish this goal.

Funeral & Burial Arrangements

Your will also provides an opportunity for you to decide what you wish to happen to your remains and what kinds of arrangements should be made for your funeral or memorial service.

Many people tend to have strong religious or ethical convictions when it comes to aspects of these decisions, such as whether or not to be an organ donor, whether or not cremation is acceptable, whether burial is preferred and what kind of religious ceremonies should be performed before being laid to rest.

Your will can remove doubt among your relatives about your wishes for important decisions like these, and you can also use it to make specific requests or arrangements (such as the song that should be played during your service) that add a personal and loving touch to your Earthly sendoff.