Torrance California Estate Planning Law Blog

When Aretha Franklin passed away earlier this year, the world lost one of the most iconic soul singers of our time. The Queen of Soul left behind a long legacy of ground-breaking, awe-inspiring music. What she didn’t leave behind, however, was a will.

Whenever someone passes away intestate—i.e., without a will—it creates considerable room for confusion and disagreement in determining how the deceased’s assets should be divided. The estate administrator must go to great lengths to try to determine the deceased’s wishes. There is also a strong possibility that, without explicit instructions, potential beneficiaries will come clamoring to stake a claim on what they believe to be theirs—resulting in a long legal battle.

One of the main reasons that California residents choose to create their own personal estate plans is to take control over how their money and assets are divided and passed out after their deaths. For example, if a person dies without an estate plan in place, their estate may be distributed to their heirs based on the laws of intestacy currently included in the state code. This could mean that an heir that the decedent did not want to collect from their estate could benefit from the decedent's passing.

In order to avoid this, an estate plan can provide an explicit set of instructions for how the estate should be distributed. If the estate creator wants to write one of their non-dependent children out of their estate, then they must make it clear through the wording of their will that they desire to prevent that individual from being a beneficiary at the time of the estate planner's death.

A trust is an important estate planning tool that California residents may use to protect their assets and wealth and preserve them for the benefit of their loved ones once the estate planner has passed on. However, there are many different kinds of trusts that individuals may establish. Different trust formats can accomplish different estate planning goals and may serve the diverse needs of California residents.

For example, previous posts here have discussed the differences that exist between revocable and irrevocable trusts. While a revocable trust may be changed or canceled by the person who makes it, an irrevocable trust cannot be undone once it is created. Estate planners may want to discuss how these important tools could help them meet their end-of-life financial goals.

There is no question that making major decisions about one's own health can be difficult and can require a significant amount of consideration. California residents may struggle to decide just how much support they want from doctors and nurses if they need to be hospitalized and may not be able to communicate their own wishes. However, once they have plans for how they want their care managed, they may want to take proactive steps to ensure that those plans are followed.

These plans can be recorded in the individual's advance health care directive. This estate planning tool directs medical care providers on how the individual wants to be cared for in the unfortunate event that they lose their capacity to communicate. In situations in which patients are in comas or otherwise incapacitated, advance health care directives can be imperative to ensuring they are treated in accordance with their wishes.