Wills and trusts to protect your assets and your family
Story, Abernathy, Ashworth, and McGill, an Association of Attorneys, provides professional, diverse estate planning services, focusing on complex, high-net-worth estates.
You worked hard to build a future. An attorney helps protect it.
A great deal is at stake. Trust an estate planning attorney who takes the time to understand your priorities and crafts documents that achieve them. There is no substitute for knowledge and experience. A will or trust is legally binding. It should be right, and it should stand up to challenge.
Estate-planning documents have these goals:
- Limit probate court involvement
- Minimize estate taxes
- Identify beneficiaries
- Distribute assets
- Pay debt
- Provide for the family
- An income source or lump sum
- Education
- Guardianships for minors and the disabled
- Provide for charitable endeavors
- Identify the parties responsible for administering the estate
Attorneys in the association also provide documents that dictate how to address financial matters when a death affects an individual or partnership business.
Estate planning documents to consider
The documents that achieve these goals include:
- Wills — Allow you to dictate who receives your assets after your death, who cares for your children and who executes your estate by distributing the assets and paying debts and taxes. If you die without a will, a court makes all of those decisions for you.
- Living wills — Make certain your wishes regarding end-of-life medical care are carried out if you become incapacitated
- Powers of attorney — Designate one person to act in your interest in certain circumstances, such as incapacitation or when handling everyday financial affairs
- Trusts — Help you manage your assets before death and after. You establish and fund the trust, dictate its operation and designate a trustee to administer how and to whom the trust funds are paid. Trusts come with restrictions and have considerable benefits, including some tax advantages, particularly for complex estates. A person can have multiple trusts with different purposes. Examples of trusts include:
- Living trust
- Revocable trust
- Irrevocable trust
- Charitable trust
- Special needs trust
The lawyers also establish charitable gift annuities, draft prenuptial and postnuptial agreements and create family limited partnerships that protect your hard-earned assets.
Make certain your estate plan is up to par
If you have assets; if you have a family; if you care what happens to either after you are gone, it is imperative that you contact Story, Abernathy, Ashworth, and McGill, an Association of Attorneys, for personal, professional assistance in creating the right estate plan. Call [ln::phone] or contact the attorneys online in Franklin, Spring Hill, Columbia and Brentwood, TN.