Estate Planning Services

A will is crucial to have. A will allows you to communicate your wishes clearly and precisely. Currently, it is highly recommended that you work closely with an attorney to create and update your will. Without a will, the state in which you reside decides how to distribute your assets to your beneficiaries according to its laws. This is known as dying intestate, and the resulting settlement process may not produce the results that you would prefer for your survivors. You can prevent this from happening by having documents drafted that reflect your wishes.

A will generally includes:

•Designation of an executor, who carries out the provisions of the will.

•Beneficiaries—those who are inheriting the assets.

•Instructions for how and when the beneficiaries will receive the assets.

•Guardians for any minor children.

For assets that do not allow for the naming of beneficiaries (such as some bank accounts and real estate), the will is the place to designate who will get them, as well as any related special instructions.

Common misconception: people believe that if you have a will, you can avoid probate. Probate is the court administrative process used to distribute a deceased person’s assets and settle the deceased person’s debts. If you have a will upon your death, your executor will very likely need to use the probate (court) system in order to administer the deceased person’s estate.

A Durable Financial Power of Attorney is a document that lets you appoint someone (known as your “agent”) to manage your finances for you if you ever become unable to do so for yourself.

The agent is much like an employee: just because you give them access to the cash register, doesn’t mean you are giving them the cash. The agent has what we call “fiduciary duties.” This means, generally, that the agent has to exercise loyalty and care when they manage the assets for you.

This power of attorney, if done correctly, can assist a client from having a court-appointed conservator (much like what happened to Brittany Spears). The power of attorney allows you to privately designate an individual you trust to assist you with managing your household when you are unable to do so. I you do not privately designate someone, you could be subject to someone the court appoints for you.

Healthcare directives, more often than not, include documents like a living will and a healthcare power of attorney. A living will is a document that comes into play when a person is in a persistent vegetative state and deemed terminally ill. In your living will, you will designate what you would want to happen to you if you ever become terminally ill and deemed in a persistent vegetative state.

A HIPAA authorization allows you to provide one or more individuals (including your agents or attorneys) access to your healthcare information. Medical professionals will require such an authorization in order to disclose any information to your loved ones.

One of the most difficult tasks we give our loved ones is the planning of our funerals. Already struck with the loss of you, now they are to engage in multiple transactions and hard decisions regarding the planning of your remembrance and memorial. Therefore, every estate planning client of Atkins Law Offices is provided with a free remembrance and memorial kit. At your free annual check ins, we will make sure that you make a diligent effort in completing this kit.

Every estate planning client of Atkins Law Offices receives a free Personal Property Memorandum. This document is more of a table/list than it is a memo. This tool allows you to designate specific tangible personal property to be gifted to specific individuals. This saves you time and expense. You won’t need to update your will every time you want to make a specific distribution (like jewelry or antiques) to one of your loved ones.

The revocable living trust is the most common estate planning tool today. A common misconception is that a trust is just for rich people. In fact, though, the trust better serves those that are trying to save money on administering a loved one’s estate when they pass. A trust allows you to designate one or more persons (trustees) who will (instead of a court) distribute your assets and pay your debts when you pass. That’s all a trust is: it is pretty much a private will.

An Asset Protection Trust is an irrevocable trust that’s often created to protect the beneficiary from the potential negative consequences associated with transfer tax laws, divorce settlements, and bankruptcy regulations. More and more domestic and international families are establishing Asset Protection Trusts in Nevada. Nevada Asset Protection Trusts include a Spendthrift Provision that prevents beneficiaries and potential creditors (including previous spouses) from gaining direct access to assets within the trust.

Nevada Self-Settled Spendthrift Trusts, also referred to as Domestic Asset Protection Trusts, allow a grantor to place assets into an irrevocable trust and remain a beneficiary of that trust. The state statutes require the use of an independent trustee before distributions can be made to the grantor.

A decentralized autonomous trust is an estate planning tool that harnesses the stability, privacy, and security of blockchain technology. These trusts are constructed by rules encoded as a computer program that allows for decentralized trust administration for crypto currency assets and NFT (non-fungible tokens). With a decentralized trust, you don’t get just one trustee. You get millions of trustees, incorruptible due to the transparency of the blockchain.

Having a trust is step one. Many individuals pay attorneys for the trust document and once the trust is signed and delivered, they believe the work stops there. However, creating a trust is the FIRST step to using a trust as your estate planning vehicle. Atkins Law Offices provides for every estate planning client a free trust funding instructions kit AND free annual check ins so we can ensure your trust is fully operational.

A family limited partnership (FLP) is a holding company owned by two or more family members, created to retain a family's business interests, real estate, publicly traded and privately held securities, or other assets contributed by its members. The purpose of creating such an entity is generally to achieve creditor protection and reduce gift and estate taxes while maintaining control over the management and distribution of the partnership's assets.

Grantor-retained trusts are irrevocable trusts created to reduce estate taxes. With each, the grantor receives some form of income from the trust for a set amount of years, and then the property is transferred to a beneficiary free of estate taxes. These trusts are used mostly by wealthy individuals to limit estate and gift taxes because they create these trusts with high-growth assets which do not incur taxes on the increased value of the assets during the life of the trust.

A qualified personal residence trust (QPRT) is a specific type of trust that allows its creator to remove a personal home from their estate for the purpose of reducing the amount of gift tax that is incurred when transferring assets to a beneficiary.

Qualified personal residence trusts allow the owner of the residence to remain living on the property for a period of time with "retained interest" in the house; once that period is over, the interest remaining is transferred to the beneficiaries as "remainder interest."

A retirement trust is a strategy where you name your trust as the beneficiary of your retirement accounts. This offers the best of both worlds. The tax benefits of a retirement account and the protection of a trust.

A retirement trust is a good idea for investors who have sizeable retirement account balances and want to control the distribution of those funds through a trust. These accounts also offer numerous protections for average investors that can ensure that your estate doesn’t lose your lifelong savings to a lawsuit, bankruptcy, divorce or spendthrift beneficiary.

A gun trust is the generic name for a revocable or irrevocable management trust that is created to take title to firearms. Revocable trusts are more common, as they can be amended and changed during the lifetime of the grantor.

Although any legally owned weapon can be placed into a gun trust, these trusts are specifically used for weapons that are classified under the National Firearms Act (NFA) Title II of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Examples of Title II weapons include a fully automatic machine gun, a short-barreled shotgun or a suppressor, sometimes called a “silencer.” The latter is a common piece of equipment that is purchased and owned by a gun trust. The trust is actually the owner of the firearm or suppressor.

Oh, how we love our furry friends. But how do we take care of them when we are gone? A pet trust is the best way to ensure your pets are taken care of. The pet trust designates a caretaker and a trustee (the person with the money). This relationship established by the trust between trustee and caretaker ensures that there are checks and balances when it comes to your pets needs.

A special needs trust (SNT), or sometimes called a Supplemental Needs Trust, is a trust that will preserve the beneficiary's eligibility for needs-based government benefits such as Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Because the beneficiary does not own the assets in the trust, he or she can remain eligible for benefit programs that have an asset limit.

For individuals who utilize a living revocable trust as the center of their estate plan, a pour over will is strongly advised. A pour-over will is a testamentary device wherein the writer of a will creates a trust, and decrees in the will that the property in his or her estate at the time of his or her death shall be distributed to the Trustee of the trust.

Generally, the pourer will is a backup tool. It is used if a person forgot to put any assets into the trust. If someone has created a trust, that person should take extra special care to ensure all there assets are titled accordingly (or the trust is named as a beneficiary accordingly) so the trust is the owner of the assets during the life person or at the time of their death. A trust is the most preferred method for avoiding probate.