With luxury real estate agent Mary Myers on your side, you can avoid many common mistakes homeowners make when trying to preserve their estate for their families. Myers has used San Diego estate planner John Reynard of Anderson Reynard with helping clients protect their assets and prepare their loved ones for the future – and, most importantly, avoid the risks of not having an estate plan.
Reynard walks their clients through estate planning with tools that can save time, money, your health care decisions, and family stress.
The Benefits of Expecting the Unexpected
Since life is unpredictable, Reynard recommends that you begin estate planning well before it seems necessary. According to Reynard, ideally speaking, people who want to protect both themselves, their loved ones and their assets will typically set up four major documents during the estate planning process to ensure their wishes are carried out in case of an emergency:
- Will
- Trust
- Power of Attorney
- Health Care Directive
Foresight For Yourself
According to the San Diego Lawyer, clients of Anderson Reynard visit his office frequently in an attempt to get authority to act on behalf of a loved one who has become incapacitated. With the proper documents in place, the family is better equipped to take immediate action; without an estate plan, many are forced to seek court approval and appointment before having the authority to act on a loved one’s behalf.
“Life is unpredictable.”
A Power of Attorney coupled with a Health Care Directive allows you to designate a trusted person to act on your behalf – according to your wishes – should you become incapacitated. A Power of Attorney, coupled with a Health Care Directive gives the person of your choice the authority to carry out the tasks that you identify in those documents.
Some clients are comfortable giving full control to close family members, while others limit that control to certain tasks. The important result is that whichever powers the person provides for, the family will be able to perform those tasks without the burden, expense and time delay of court proceedings.
Some common tasks that these documents can facilitate in addition to a number of other tasks potentially unforeseen if you are not using a professional estate planner:
- Pay for doctors and caretakers
- Sign tax returns
- Deposit retirement dividend checks
Foresight for Your Family
If you choose not to create a trust, and only execute a will, your estate will most likely still be subject to a probate proceeding and be subject to the processes and expense which that entails. With the complete planning that a full estate plan entails, you can help ensure that your estate will be distributed:
- Smoothly
- Confidential
- Outside of probate
- Without costly statutory fees
- According to your specific wishes
A will and trust allow you to set up your estate exactly as you want, allowing you to execute a very detailed and specific plan.
Boutique estate planner Reynard highlights one of the biggest problems that his office faces: when a life event triggers the need for an estate plan, and mom or dad has already lost capacity, it’s probably too late to execute a fully comprehensive estate plan.
Laws exist which can render a document void or unenforceable if the individual lacked the requisite capacity to fully understand the nature of the transaction. This can render a will, trust, health care directive or power of attorney useless. Many families are forced to seek court approval and appointment to facilitate these wishes once a family member loses the capacity to handle their own affairs. In this day and age when people are living much longer, in many cases the last few years are marked with insufficient capacity to execute legal and enforceable documents.
The time for effective planning is before these capacity issues ever come into question.
The Role Of Your Real Estate Agent
Whether you are buying or selling a house, luxury real estate agent Mary Myers can help you achieve your lifestyle goals and maintain peace of mind. By working with attorneys like Reynard, Myers makes sure her clients have the benefit of a trust when it comes time to transfer a newly bought home. She can also work with a SD lawyer to fold a newly bought house into an established estate plan.
Take a team approach to estate planning.
With Myers’s experience in buying and selling homes as part of a complete estate plan, she can help her San Diego real estate clients, along with the guidance of an attorney:
- Create a trust to protect new and existing assets/properties
- Buy a home for the family
- Place a home in a trust
- Properly title a new home
- Determine the proper trust and structure of a sale or purchase
- Keep assets in the family
- Avoid creditors
- Execute an existing trust
Who Should I Choose To Set Up My Estate?
Now that you have learned the benefits of having an estate plan and working with a real estate agent to manage your assets, what’s the next step? Read our next article, “How To Choose The Right Estate Planner & Agent” from Mary Myers, to learn:
- How to find a quality lawyer for estate planning
- How to find the best real estate agent for your estate planning goals
Want To Read More From Mary Myers?
While we hope this post was informative for you, it should not be considered legal advice. It is imperative to meet with an attorney to determine the best course of action for your unique estate.
In the meantime, click the links below to check out other informative articles from Mary.
Watch Mary Myers and John Reynard
Is video more your style? Check out the video with Mary Myers and John Reynard as they discuss the importance of an including an attorney on your team.