When our firm prepared your Living Trust, you were promised a free review of your estate plan every three years or so. If it has been that long, I invite you to contact our office today to schedule your appointment.
Periodic reviews of your estate plan are essential for the following reasons:
● Laws change. The recent federal tax law increased the individual exemption from estate taxes to $13,610,000! This change alone may affect certain Articles of your Living Trust and require amendment. In 2014, Wisconsin adopted the Uniform Trust Code which allows us to modernize our clients’ older Living Trust documents to streamline trust administration and take advantage of all the other features of this new statute.
● Families change. Children grow up. Heirs divorce, become disabled, or disappear from your life. Now may be an obvious time to change your Successor Trustees or to redraft who receives what from your Living Trust, and under what terms.
● Your assets change. You may have purchased new assets and disposed of others. You may have invested in new life insurance policies and annuities or revised your monies set aside for retirement. We want you to be sure your assets are title appropriately and that all beneficiary designations are correct and in conformance with your estate plan.
For all these important reasons, please contact our office for your FREE estate plan review.
During this complimentary review we will: Discuss your family situation to ensure that the terms of your Living Trust still reflect your wishes and family situation;· Review the beneficiary designations of your IRAs and retirement plans to be sure you are taking advantage of the recent law changes; Review your assets to be sure they are properly titled in your Living Trust, and; Analyze the impact of the new tax law changes to see if your estate planning documents need to be updated.
Your review is an ideal opportunity to coordinate your estate planning documents with your financial planning goals. To make the most of your time together, please bring your Estate Planning Portfolio and a current list of your assets with you to the review. For your ease of convenience, we also recommend you bring your current bank statements and investment statements for your stocks, bonds, mutual funds, life insurance, annuities, and IRAs. We have enclosed a one-page form you can use to fill in your current assets and income for our meeting.
To get started, call our office today at (608) 355-0907. Ask my estate planning paralegal, Amy, to set up a free trust review meeting.
