By Rob Morris
Just as spring is a good time to clean your home and yard, it’s also a good time to review your estate planning and make sure everything is up to date and organized.
If your estate planning includes a living trust, now is a good time to make sure the trust is fully funded.Â
A trust only acts on property owned by the trust. A common issue that makes a trust less effective is the failure to transfer ownership of property into the trust. For example, you sell your house and buy a new one. If ownership of the new home isn’t held by the trust then the trust doesn’t apply to it. Fund your trust.
Update your beneficiaries. People are born, they die, they get divorced, they grow up.
You no doubt have retirement plans, insurance policies, financial accounts all with named beneficiaries. Now is a good time to review all of your beneficiary designations and make sure they are up to date.
If you have estate planning documents, such as wills, powers of attorney or advance directives, where are they located? You may not have looked at them since you signed them and your lawyer gave you a folder. Make sure your family knows where to find the documents.
If you have a will or other documents from another state, now is the time to update them to take advantage of Texas laws such as independent administration.
Also update your documents just as you updated your beneficiary designations.
If you have a family member who has died, now is the time to transfer ownership from his name to the new owner. This may involve probate of a will, filing an affidavit of death or just showing a death certificate.
Attorney Rob Morris is an attorney at Hammerle Morris Law Firm, a boutique law firm offering services in estate planning, probate, guardianship, business law, litigation and real estate. Contact him at (972) 436-9300. This article does not constitute as legal advice.
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