By Lane V. Erickson, Idaho Estate Planning Attorney
The Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, has had a devastating effect on the world economy, and has resulted in numerous shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders from national and local governments. Despite all this, it is not too late to get your estate planning done. At Racine Olson, we are available and capable of assisting you in completing your own personalized estate plan. It is much easier than you think.
For more than 70 years the premier team of Idaho estate planning attorneys at the Racine law office have assisted clients in creating their own personalized estate planning documents. As part of that team, I have worked with individual clients for more than 20 years. Our goal is to work with our clients to help them discover their personal needs. Whether you are single or married, have young children, have adult children, or have no children, we can help you create a customized estate plan that will meet your personal needs.
The goal of estate planning is to provide protection to you while you are alive. Additionally, we will help you create a plan that will allow a distribution of your money, property, and other assets to your family members and loved ones in the way you want.
A cookie cutter approach is never a good idea when it comes to estate planning. Rather, your estate plan should consider your own personal needs. It should consider the structure of your family. Additionally, it should consider and take care of other loved ones in the way that you specifically want.
Yes, the Coronavirus has had an incredible impact on the world, on nations and likely on you personally. The good news is that it’s not too late to be active in getting your estate-planning completed. Our goal is to help you and to make the process easy.
Estate Planning QuestionnaireWe start by providing you with a free Estate Planning Questionnaire. The Questionnaire is incredibly simple and useful in gathering the information you need to begin your estate-planning. All of our clients who have used the Questionnaire have told us that it was just the thing they needed to help them get started. The reason for this, is that most of our clients, and most people generally, don’t know how to start and because of that they don’t start.
The Questionnaire is designed to gather information about you personally, your family, and other loved ones that you want to care for. It also provides you with information about the decisions that you should be thinking about. These would include who you want to appoint to do certain things for you.
For example, a basic estate plan consists of a last will and testament, a durable power of attorney, a living will, and a power of attorney for health care. In the last will and testament, you will be nominating people to act as your personal representative. The personal representative is the individual who takes care of everything that needs to be done after you pass away. Your written will nominates them so they can obtain the legal authority they need to do what needs to be done.
Similarly, the powers of attorney that are listed above allow you to nominate people who can step in and help take care of you and your money, property, and other assets while you are alive, if you are no longer able to do it yourself. Additionally, the individuals you nominate can help make healthcare decisions for you too.
The Questionnaire also provides guidance to parents of young children concerning nominating guardians and considering how to handle the money and property that could go to young children. We provide information and suggestions on the kinds and types of trusts that could be used to protect your estate so that it can be provided and used for the benefit of your children until they reach an age where you are comfortable having it distributed directly to them.
Free Consultation by Phone or VideoOnce the Questionnaire is completed we then schedule a free 30- minute consultation to review your information, answer all of your questions, and help you make some decisions about the things you would like to complete as part of your estate plan.
With Idaho’s current Stay-at-Home order in place, we are doing these free consultations by phone and/or video. We are happy to set it up and complete it either way. Even before the Coronavirus outbreak, we were often using phone and/or video systems to complete this free consultation with clients throughout the entire state of Idaho. With the Coronavirus, we are doing more and more phone and video consultations. We are happy to do it anyway that you are comfortable.
Once we have an idea of what it is you want to accomplish, we can then provide you with detailed options of what you can choose to do to protect yourself and your family and loved ones. We also provide you with the flat fee prices for each of the options that could work best for you. This way, you have all the information you need to decide what you would like to do free of charge.
Signing Estate Planning DocumentsIf you do decide to hire us to help you get your estate-planning completed, we can do this quite easily as well. We create the documents for you and can either email them or mail them to you to review. We do an additional phone consultation to go over the estate planning documents and answer any questions you have. Once we have the documents finalized, we move forward with signing them.
To sign your documents, we simply need you to put your signature and date on the documents. We also need two adults over the age of 18 who can witness your written Will. We can provide you with a mailer so you can return these documents to us. Once we receive your documents back from you, we then verify that you and the witnesses signed the documents. Through this verification, we can then have all of your documents notarized.
Once we have all of this done, we put all of your documents together in an organized estate planning binder which we then mail back to you. And that’s it! As you can see, even with the Coronavirus, it’s still pretty simple to get your estate-planning done with the system we have in place.
We encourage you to start today. Download our free Estate Planning Questionnaire and schedule your free 30-minute consultation today. Once you have taken this step, you will see how easy it is to gather and understand the information you need to make decisions and to get your own personal estate planning done. We look forward to your call!
ENLIST AN IDAHO ESTATE PLANNING ATTORNEY TO HELP YOUOur team of Idaho lawyers can help you with any of your estate planning or probate needs. Whether you are seeking to create or review an estate plan for yourself or would like to help a loved one, we are available to discuss your options and answer your questions at an initial free 30-minute consultation. Call us toll free at 877.232.6101 or 208.232.6101 for a free consultation. You can also email us directly at lane@racineolson.com or stop by our office at 201 East Center Street, Pocatello, Idaho 83201. We can set up an appointment to answer your questions and help you solve your Idaho estate planning problems.