SFP 005: 6 Tips To Estate Planning And Avoiding Pobate
In this episode of The Stumble Forward Podcast I’ll be covering the 6 most important tips to doing your estate planning and avoiding probate court. Back a few years ago I actually did this with my own financial situation after seeing a movie that really moved me emotionally to take action.
In this movie a young couple was killed in a car wreck leaving their young child in the hands of two individuals who had no experience with kids. Fortunately this couple had an estate plan and will all in place and were able to side step things like probate court and dealing with who will actually get custody of their kids and possessions.
Almost a week later my wife and I were meeting up with our lawyer to discuss our will and estate plan. In those few meeting we laid the ground work for our kids future in the event something were to happen to my wife and I.
Now I know this is a topic we all need to talk about at one point or another but it shouldn’t be when something like this makes us finally see the light but rather before these things happen.
So in this podcast I will cover the 6 big things I learned while setting my will and estate plan and hopefully you will be able to benefit from this information as well.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode
- Learn why need to have a will in place and how it could cost big if you don’t.
- Learn how your property deed should be set up in order to prevent probate court.
- Learn how to set up your financial accounts so they get passed on properly.
- Learn how to set up your will so you don’t give to much power to one particular person.
- Learn why you need to inform others who are going to be in your will.
- Finally, learn why double checking your will over could save you some big headaches down the road.
6 Tips To Estate Planning
- Make Sure Your Home Is Deeded Correctly. Having your home deeded in both spouses is very important and if it’s not it could but you in a very bad position.
- Set Accounts Up As Joint with Rights To Survivor. Did you know how you set up things as simple as your savings account could make a big difference as to what your loved ones will get. This is often one of the most over looked things in estate planning.
- Review Your Beneficiaries. Reviewing your beneficiaries is very important and must be done on an ongoing basis because beneficiaries will trump your will everyday of the week. On top of that I also discuss the common mistakes people make with their beneficiaries as well.
- Split Up The Responsibilities. When your setting up your will it’s very important that you structure it in the right way otherwise some people could get to much power. Learn how I set my will up in the podcast.
- Inform Those Who Are Going To Be In Your Will. It’s also important that you inform the people who you plan to have in your will what their role and duties are.
- Double Check Your Will. Finally, it’s very important that you double check your will for any mistakes because they do happen.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
- Life As We Know It – Movie that inspired me to get my estate planning done.
Wrapping Up
Wrapping up take the time to set up your estate plan and will up now. You only have to do it once and it doesn’t even cost you much. In fact the little money you spend now can go a long way to protecting and more importantly fulfilling your wishes if the need should ever arise.
Finally, if you get a chance subscribe to my podcast and leave a review which you can do over in iTunes and Stictcher. Check out the links below and do that now.
Thanks for listening and I will see you in the next episode.
Great information!!! We share this passion as so many we know were left in bad situations because of unexpected death of parents or spouses. It is the main reason we created SafelyFiled.com. We ourselves wanted an extremely secure place to store the important documents and wishes we have in place while at the same time making that information available to our loved ones and estate planners. We did it not only for ourselves, but especially for those we love who we want to ensure are taken care of with our assets after we’re gone. We’d love for you to check out SafelyFiled Chris. If you think it’s worthwhile, blog about it. We’d love the opportunity to answer any questions you or your readers might have about it.
Hi Terri, I’m glad you like the podcast. I really appreciate your support. Your product does look pretty interesting. Do you have any sort of affiliate program for it?
Yes we do! Here’s a link to our current affiliations: https://safelyfiled.com/home/affiliation-page We can talk via email or phone to explain more if you’re interested.
When my father died, we really had a problem about the title of our lands. When my mother decided to sell one of the titles, it took for almost a few months to finish the process because the titles was renamed from my father.
Changing titles from a deceased family member can be a long and drawn out process. My father recently switched his land over into one of my brothers names so he could avoid the same thing. On top of that if my father were to go to a nursing home and he was completely out of money they could do a 5 year look back and could actually sell the land to get the money they need to pay for his medical bills. It’s a rotten system but that’s why it pays to take care of these things beforehand. Thanks for your awesome comment Marie.