Page 12 - Book10E

Money has never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants.
—Benjamin Franklin
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estate after you die completely up to chance (or, more accurately, the complicated set of state laws that will apply if you haven’t done the estate planning). While it is human nature to just let things happen and devote your valuable time to the present cares of family and career, you really can’t take any of your property with you, so why wouldn’t you want to take the time to appropriately match up your property with the people and institutions that matter most to you? Besides, estate planning is as much (if not more) about what you do during
your life to manage your estate than what happens after you die.
Protection and Control
It’s safe to assume you are concerned with the two primary goals or objectives of estate planning: protection and control. Indeed, you want to protect your estate and control how it is divided. But going
beyond the general idea of protecting your possessions and being in control of what happens to them, you should have some very specific objectives that you’re trying to accomplish with your estate planning, such as:
• Providing for your loved ones . Consider your spouse, children, grandchildren, and parents who may rely on you for financial support. If you were to die tomorrow, what would happen to that financial support your loved ones depend on? Without question, financial and other support for family members after you die can get very complicated if the affairs of your estate aren’t in order. It’s important to pay attention to the details of protecting your family members should you die. Specifically,
if your loved ones include former spouses, children living in another household, stepchildren, adopted children, divorced and remarried parents, or an unmarried partner, then you have a lot of estate decisions to make about who gets what.
Estate Planning