Are you thinking about protecting the future of your loved ones? When it comes to the future of your family, you want to make sure that they inherit your hard-earned wealth. The more complex your holdings are, the more complex the inheritance process becomes, especially if you have assets in USA and Canada.
Some people assume that their loved ones will automatically inherit everything after their demise. It is true that your wealth gets distributed among your heirs but what if that process involves an ugly family feud? Do you want your family to face a dispute over who gets what and how much? This is especially true when To avoid such enmity, smart people make legal arrangements to ensure a smooth transfer of assets. However, when setting up legal documents, they often get confused between estate plans, Wills, and trusts. So, to avoid this confusion, we will find out the difference between estate planning and will.
What is Estate Planning?
Estate planning is a broad term that involves setting up multiple legal documents like wills, trusts, power of attorney, advance directives, and more. It is a comprehensive document that ensures the smooth distribution of wealth after your death, as well as medical and financial instructions to protect your future. It means that estate planning allows you to make decisions for your future such as what type of medical treatment you want if you ever become incapacitated. It includes both durable powers of attorney for your finances and healthcare power of attorney for medical decisions. It means that estate planning goes beyond making a will.
Setting up an estate plan means you decide to authorize a trustworthy person to make healthcare decisions on your behalf while you’re alive, or decide how you wish your financial issues to be handled. A qualified estate planning lawyer can review your situation and create a tailored plan. While setting up or updating your estate plan, the lawyer will also find ways to minimize your estate taxes. You can also specify guardianship for your young kids in the event both parents died. In short, an estate plan is a more complex and broad plan that may apply during your life as well as after your death.
What Is a Will?
As mentioned above, a will is a part of a complete estate plan. The process of creating a will involves enlisting all your assets, valuing the estate, and designating beneficiaries. You get to decide who gets what and how much. Creating a will ensures that your assets will be distributed after your death the way you wished. This legal document also allows you to decide how your children should be cared of after your death. You need to name an executor of the will who will be in charge of carrying out the actions in your will.
So, estate planning and will are two different things. wills are a part of a complete estate plan that focuses on the distribution of wealth, guardianship of kids, etc. If you want to protect your future, as well as safeguard your loved ones, estate planning is a better option than just will.
