A plan for you, your family, and what you’ve built
Estate planning is a tool for making important decisions now—while you have the time and ability to decide what should happen, who should be responsible, and how the people and things that matter to you should be protected.
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Estate planning begins with deciding what you want to happen
An Estate Plan is a set of decisions about what should happen during your lifetime and after your death. It identifies who can help you if you cannot act for yourself, how the people you love should be provided for, and what should happen to the property and resources you have built over your lifetime.
Legal documents are the tools that put those decisions into place. Because the plan should determine the documents—not the other way around.
Your Estate Plan has several jobs
A complete plan should address what happens to you, your family, what you have built, and the plan itself as life changes.
Take Care of You
Who should act for you if you cannot act for yourself? Your plan can provide authority and direction for financial matters, healthcare decisions, medical information, and the wishes you want followed.
Planning for YouTake Care of Your Family
Who should receive what you leave behind? When should they receive it? Who should manage an inheritance when additional guidance or protection is needed?
Planning for Your FamilyTake Care of What You’ve Built
Your home, accounts, investments, retirement assets, real estate, business interests, land, and other property all need to work with the Estate Plan you created.
Protecting What You've BuiltKeep the Plan Updated
Families change. Assets change. Relationships, health, priorities, and the people you trust may change. Your Estate Plan should continue to reflect the life you are actually living.
Keep Your Plan CurrentImportant decisions may require more than one legal document
A comprehensive Estate Plan may use several legal tools, each with a different job. The important part is making sure those tools work together toward the same plan.
Living Trust
Provides a framework for managing trust assets during your lifetime, identifies who can step in when necessary, and directs what happens to trust assets later.
Living TrustsWills & Probate
A Will provides instructions for property that passes through probate and can serve important roles within a larger Estate Plan.
Wills & ProbatePowers of Attorney & Healthcare Documents
Give people you trust appropriate authority and direction when you cannot handle financial or healthcare decisions yourself.
Planning for YouCreating the documents is not the same as completing the plan
The documents may explain what should happen, but your assets also need to work with those instructions.
When a Living Trust is part of the plan, real estate, accounts, beneficiary arrangements, and other assets need to be reviewed and properly coordinated with the trust.
At Deason Garner & Sparks, we help identify how your assets fit into the Estate Plan and prepare the paperwork and instructions needed to help put that plan into place.
Because a well-written plan only works when the assets surrounding it are working in the same direction.
Learn About Living Trusts
There is no single Estate Plan that works for every family
Your Estate Plan should reflect your family, your assets, your relationships, your responsibilities, your goals, and what you want the plan to accomplish.
Different stages of life
A couple raising young children may have different priorities from someone who is retired or planning for changing care needs later in life.
Long-Term Care PlanningDifferent kinds of assets
A business owner, property owner, farmer, or family with assets in more than one state may need additional coordination within the larger plan.
Protecting What You've BuiltDifferent family circumstances
Blended families, beneficiaries with special needs, minor children, or other unique relationships may require additional thought about how the plan should work.
Special CircumstancesThat is why good Estate Planning starts with understanding you.
Estate planning questions
Build the plan. Put it into place. Keep it working.
Estate Planning is about creating a relationship that lets you build your plan with confidence, put it into place with assurance, keep it current as life changes, and know your family will have a place to turn when the plan needs to work.