02-21-2024 PTL - Flipbook - Page 8
8 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, February 21, 2024
ESTATE PLANNING
Preparing for
tomorrow today
Estate planning eases the
burden on you and your
loved ones
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
O
ver the years that I’ve written about older adults, one recurring subject
is what I referred to as “The Talks,” discussions by parents with their
children or children with their aging parents. It’s a tragedy when a parent
is stricken with a fatal illness or dies, and the child has no idea what he or she
front of a notary public (a state-appointed official who serves as an impartial witness to deter fraud) and two witnesses.
Then he flew to Costa Rica. He died
suddenly while he was away. You never
know.
would have wanted because neither initiated the conversation.
An adjunct to this is the preparation
of estate planning documents. A full
two-thirds of Americans haven’t done
anything, any planning, any discussion,
any effort to get started. If you have
any assets – a home, a car, a portfolio
of investments, a bank account – by
default, the state in which you live will
happily take it all if you don’t have a will
or revocable trust.
Another reason to create these documents is to choose to whom your estate
will go. Most of us have seen or been a
party to a family at odds with each other
over who gets what. That is not a good
outcome and one to be avoided.
Cautionary Tales
Believe it can’t happen to you? Wrong.
A friend in Florida was stricken with
an illness, was taken to the hospital and,
a week later, died intestate (not having made a will before one dies). The
state of Florida was delighted. It got
her house, her retirement account, her
car, her investments, and all her other
belongings. You never know what tomorrow will bring, and stalling, assuming you
have plenty of time, is wishful thinking.
After our last remaining parent passed
away, my brother finally decided he might
need a will. He went online (Legal Zoom,
www.legalzoom.com, has a basic one
for $89), printed one out, and signed it in
Do It Today
I spoke with two experts on creating
estate and end-of-life documents, both
experts in this area of the law. Both, by
the way, prefer a revocable living trust
over a will that needs to go through probate. A trust is just a way to hold assets
and saves time and money. When you’re
young, you can do a will.
They take their job seriously and do a
good job of guiding clients to a solution
that will distribute their estates in ways
they want, plus a little more. You really
don’t want to put this off.
Randolph C. Knepper, of counsel at
Levin Gann PA, is licensed in Maryland
and has been practicing law since 1977.
He focuses on estates and trusts, estate
administration and some employment
law. “At minimum, you need the Big
Three of documents: a will or revocable
living trust, an advanced health directive and a Power of Attorney. You should
also choose your attorney with care. He
or she is there to put in writing what you
want done with your property, both to
protect you, and to make sure that it
happens. That said, you have to do your
part also.”
Lawrence Adashek of Lawrence
Adashek, P. A., estate planning and elder
law attorney, has been practicing since
1996 and is licensed in Maryland and
Florida. “It may be a good idea to take
advantage of a free consultation if it’s
available. You will learn what decisions
you will need to make, what you need
to think through, and get a rough idea of
the preparations you’ll have to attend to
ahead of time. It also allows the attorney
to learn about you and what you’ll need
in an estate plan.”
Both Knepper and Adashek think out
of the box and do much more than fill
out forms. As Knepper says, “An attorney
