Charlotte Estate Planning Services

Estate planning is an important part of preparing for retirement and ensuring that your loved ones will receive your assets after you are gone. Estate planning involves creating a plan for managing your wealth while you are alive and distributing it after you pass away. Creating a thorough estate plan will help you avoid family conflict after your passing and protect the people you care about financially.

The goal of estate planning is to accomplish your personal and family goals while easing the burden on your family associated with handling your legal and financial affairs. During the estate planning process, you and your lawyer will evaluate your financial situation and analyze your goals to create a comprehensive estate plan. Your estate plan will address what should happen if you become incapacitated and what will happen to your assets after you pass away. Another important goal of estate planning is to protect your assets now, as well as in the future, and to reduce your tax liability.

An estate includes all of your assets, such as real property, investments, business interests, insurance proceeds, personal property, and your personal effects. Every estate plan is different and requires a unique approach. However, an estate plan’s general goal is to decide who will inherit your property after you pass away, how the transfer will occur, and how your assets should be organized now to facilitate this transfer. There are many different tools that your attorney can use to create your comprehensive estate plan, such as:

• A revocable living trust
• Lifetime gifts
• A last will and testament
• Joint property ownership with the rights to survivorship
• Irrevocable trust
• Beneficiary designations

All of these tools, and more, can help you create the estate plan you need. However, using the wrong combination of approaches can create real problems and unintended results. The goal of estate planning is not merely setting up the right legal tool, but also organizing and evaluating your assets so that the device works well for you.

When people do not have a comprehensive view of their estate plan, the legal tools they choose may not work together efficiently. At Arnold & Smith, PLLC, we know how to use a big picture vision to create a comprehensive estate plan while paying attention to all of the smallest details involved in our clients’ estate plans, so we do not miss any critical issues. Our clients know that their well-drafted estate plans will ensure that their property and assets will pass down to the people they choose in the type of transfer they desire.

There are many benefits to creating a well-drafted estate plan. You will rest easier knowing that your family will receive the assets they need to survive financially after you pass away and with minimal hardship. Using the right estate planning tools, you can spare your family the expense and publicity involved with having a court review all of your financial matters in a public probate proceeding.

You will also likely be able to minimize the amount of taxes your loved ones pay and provide those loved ones who inherit money from you with an advantageous tax outcome. You also have peace of mind that your concerns and goals have been addressed in full.

The first step in creating an effective estate plan is to communicate your goals with your lawyer. At Arnold & Smith, PLLC, our estate planning attorneys listen carefully to our clients’ concerns to offer them an estate plan specific to their unique needs. We focus on our clients and advise them on the best way to accomplish their goals. We are there for them throughout every step of the estate planning process. 

We ensure that our estate planning documents reflect our clients’ goals and that their plan will work as they intend it to work. We also communicate with our clients, so they understand all of their estate plans’ ins and outs. We want our clients to feel comfortable with their estate plans. Moreover, we provide our clients with annual updates on any changes in the law that could affect them.

Whether you need to revise your estate plan or create an entire estate plan from scratch, you need an estate planning lawyer on your side. Contact Arnold & Smith, PLLC today to schedule your initial consultation at our Charlotte, Mooresville, or Monroe offices.