Start your Estate Plan
Please fill out the following form to start the process in completing your estate plan. Fill out as much as you can, as all the information is required to complete your estate plan. All information will be reviewed and you will be contacted by a lawyer.
Step-by-step:
- Make a will.
- Consider a trust.
- Make health care directives.
- Make a financial power of attorney.
- Protect your children's property.
- File beneficiary forms.
- Consider life insurance.
- Understand estate taxes.
- Cover funeral expenses.
- Make final arrangements.
- Protect your business.
- Store your documents.
What's involved in wrapping up an estate
It's both an honor and a burden to serve as someone's executor. An executor is entrusted with responsibility for winding up someone's
earthly affairs -- a big or little task, depending on the situation. Essentially, an executor's job is to protect a deceased person's
property until all debts and taxes have been paid, and to see that what's left is transferred to the people who are entitled to it.
The law does not require an executor (also called personal representative) to be a legal or financial expert. But it does require the
highest degree of honesty, impartiality, and diligence. This is called a "fiduciary duty" -- the duty to act with scrupulous good
faith and honesty on behalf of someone else.
Executors have a number of duties, depending on the complexity of the deceased person's financial and family circumstances.
Typically, an executor must:
- Decide whether or not probate court proceedings are needed.
- Figure out who inherits property. If the deceased person left a will, the executor will read it to determine who gets what. If there's no will, the person in charge (sometimes called the administrator) will have to look at state law (called "intestate succession" statutes) to find out who the deceased person's heirs are.
- File the will (if any) in the local probate court.
- Find the deceased person's assets and manage them during the probate process.
- Handle day-to-day details. This may include terminating leases and credit cards, and notifying banks and government agencies
- Set up an estate bank account.
- Use estate funds to pay continuing expenses. The executor may need to pay for example, mortgage payments, utility bills, and homeowner's insurance premiums.
- Pay debts.
- Pay taxes.
- Supervise the distribution of the deceased person's property.
Complete Estate Planning - Living Trusts - Living Wills - Power of Attorney

