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If you are still operating as a sole proprietor, the time to incorporate your business is now. 

​Incorporating your business can save you money on taxes and limit your liability for business debts. But, most importantly, it says to the world – I’m in business. And that sends an important message to you, your clients, your spouse, your friends, family and, yes, even to the IRS.

In the early months or years of your business, you may not be earning enough money to save on your taxes by incorporating, but it’s still important that you do, if you want to be making that kind of money.

You see, it’s the act of incorporating itself that says “I’m in business” and gets you on the path to earning, learning and growing.

Unless you’ve created a proper estate plan, when you die many of your assets must first pass through the court process known as before those assets can be distributed to your heirs. Like most court proceedings, can be time-consuming, costly, and open to the public, and because of this, avoiding probate—and keeping your family out of court—is a central goal of most estate plans.

During, the court supervises a number of different legal actions, all of which are aimed at finalizing your affairs and settling your estate. Although we’ll discuss them more in-depth below, typically consists of the following processes:

• Determining the validity of your will (if you have one).
• Appointing an executor or administrator to manage the process and settle your estate.
• Locating and valuing all of your assets.
• Notifying & paying your creditors.
• Filing & paying your taxes.
• Distributing your assets to the appropriate beneficiaries.

In most cases, going through all of these steps is a real pain for the people you love. It’s expensive, can take a long time, and be highly inconvenient, and sometimes, even downright messy.

By implementing the right estate planning strategies, however, you can help your loved ones avoid probate all together—or at least make the process extremely simple for them. To spare your family from the time, cost, and stress inherent to, here in this two-part series, we’ll first explain how the process works and what it would entail for your loved ones, and then we’ll outline the different ways you can avoid probate with wise planning.

As mentioned previously, if you fail to put in place a proper estate plan, your assets must go through before they can be distributed to your heirs. In general, this includes those individuals who have no estate plan at all, those whose estate plan consists of a will alone, and those who have a will that’s deemed invalid by the court.

It’s important to point out that even if you have a will in place, your loved ones will still be required to go through upon your death. Therefore, if you want to keep your family out of court and out of conflict when you die, you cannot rely solely on a will, and you’ll need to put in place additional estate planning vehicles, which we will cover in further detail later.

If you die without a will, it’s known as dying intestate, and in such cases, is still required to pay your debts and distribute your assets. However, since you haven’t expressed how you wish your estate to be divided among your heirs, your assets will be distributed to your closest living relatives based on our state’s intestate succession laws. These laws typically give priority to spouses, children, and parents, followed by siblings and grandparents, and then more distant relatives. If no living heirs can be found, then your assets go to the state.

Some states allow estates with a relatively low value to bypass and use an abbreviated process to settle the estate. For example, Texas law allows estates with a total value of less than $75,000 to skip probate. In those cases, beneficiaries can claim the estate’s assets using simpler legal actions, such as by filing an affidavit or other form.

Additionally, when an individual’s debts exceed the value of their assets, or a person has no assets at all, is often not initiated, and the estate is settled using alternative legal processes.

How plays out is largely determined by whether or not you had a valid will in place at the time of death. However, even in cases where no will exists, or the will is deemed invalid, the process is quite similar. Indeed, once the court appoints someone to oversee the process on your behalf, the process unfolds in a nearly identical manner, regardless if you had a will or not.

1. Authenticating The Validity Of Your Will: Following your death, your executor is responsible for filing your will and death certificate with the court, and this initiates the process. From there, the court must authenticate your will to ensure it was properly created and executed in accordance with state law, and this may involve a court hearing.

Notice of the hearing must be given to all of the beneficiaries named in your will, along with all potential heirs who would stand to inherit under state law in the absence of a will. This hearing gives these individuals the opportunity to contest the validity of your will in order to prevent the document from being admitted.

For example, someone might contest your will on the grounds that it was improperly executed (signed, witnessed, and/or notarized) as required by state law, or someone might claim that you were unduly influenced or coerced to change your will. If such a contest is successful, the court declares your will invalid, which effectively means the document never existed in the first place.

2. Appointing The Executor Or Administrator: If you created a will, the court must formally appoint the person you named in your will as your executor before they can legally act on your behalf. If you died without a will, the court will appoint someone—typically your closest living relative—to serve in this role, known as your personal representative or administrator.

In some cases, the court might require your executor to post a bond before they can serve. The bond functions as an insurance policy to reimburse the estate in the event the executor makes a serious error during that financially damages the estate.

3. Locating & Valuing Your Assets: Once begins, the executor must identify, locate, and take possession of all of your assets, so they can be appraised to determine the total value of your estate. This includes not only those assets listed in your will and other estate planning documents, but also those you may have not included in your estate plan. This is why keeping a regularly updated inventory of your assets is so important.

Any assets the executor is unable to locate will end up in our state’s Department of Unclaimed Property. Across the U.S., there is more than $58 billion (yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’) of assets stuck in state Departments of Unclaimed Property. Fortunately, this is easy to prevent when you work with us. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we will not only help you create a comprehensive asset inventory, we will make sure this inventory stays updated throughout your lifetime.

In the case of real estate, although the executor is not expected to actually move into your home or other residence, he or she is required to ensure that your mortgage, homeowners insurance, and property taxes are paid while is ongoing. These and all other debts can be paid from your estate.

Once all of your assets have been located, the executor must determine their value, which is typically done using financial statements and/or appraisals. From there, the combined value of all of your assets is used to estimate the total value of your estate.

4. Notifying & Paying Your Creditors: To ensure all of your outstanding debts are paid before your assets are distributed, the executor must notify all of your creditors of your death. In most states, any unknown creditors can be notified by publishing a death notice with your local newspaper.

Creditors typically have a limited period of time—usually one year—after being notified to make claims against your estate. The executor can challenge any creditor claims he or she considers invalid, and in turn, the creditor can petition the court to rule on whether the claim must be paid.

From there, valid creditor claims are then paid. The executor will use your estate funds to pay all of your final bills, including any outstanding medical and funeral expenses.

5. Filing & Paying Your Taxes: In addition to paying all of your outstanding private debts, the executor is also responsible for filing and paying any outstanding taxes you owe to the government at the time of death. This includes personal income and capital-gains taxes, as well as state and federal estate taxes, if your estate is valuable enough to qualify.

That said, the federal estate tax exemption is currently set at $11.7 million for individuals and $23.4 million for married couples, so most families won’t have to worry about estate taxes. And for those who do exceed that threshold, there are several strategies you can use to reduce the size of your estate to avoid these taxes.

Any taxes due are paid from estate funds. In some cases, this may require liquidating assets to raise the needed cash. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we will not only support you during your lifetime to implement tax-saving strategies to minimize your tax bill, but we will also work with your loved ones following your death in the same capacity to ensure the wealth and legacy you’ve built provides the maximum benefit to those you leave behind.

6. Distribution Of Your Remaining Assets: Once the court confirms all of your debts and taxes have been paid—which typically requires the executor to file an accounting of all transactions he or she engaged in during the process—the executor can petition the court for authorization to distribute the remaining assets in your estate to the beneficiaries named in your will, or according to state intestate succession laws, if you didn’t have a will.

Once all assets have been distributed, the executor must file a petition with the court to close. If all creditors and taxes have been paid, your assets have been distributed, and there are no other outstanding issues to be addressed, the court will issue an order formally closing the estate and terminating the executor’s appointment.

As your Personal Family Lawyer® firm, one of our primary goals when creating your estate plan is to keep your family out of court and out of conflict no matter what happens to you. Yet, as you can see, if your family has to go through, your estate plan falls woefully short of that goal, leaving those you love most stuck in an unnecessary, expensive, time-consuming, and public court process.

Fortunately, it’s easy for you to spare your family the burden of with proactive planning. Next week, we’ll look at the ways you can do just that in the second part of this series. Until then, if you haven’t put an estate plan in place or have one that would force your family to go through, work with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® for a Family Wealth Planning Session.

Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss the estate planning strategies that you can use to avoid the need for your loved ones to go through.

This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer®. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That’s why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session™, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.

While the quarantines, shutdowns, and social distancing measures related to the pandemic have been difficult for everyone, the elderly have been particularly hard hit. Since seniors face the most health risks from COVID-19, most of them have been careful to avoid close contact with their family members, and this has left many grandparents unable to visit with their grandchildren for close to a year now.

This loss of in-person connection for such an extended period of time can cause people to feel isolated and lonely, which can eventually lead to mental health issues like depression. At the same time, children who are unable to spend time with their grandparents may experience confusion and anxiety over their lost relationship.

Seeing that the pandemic currently seems to be getting worse, there’s no telling how long it will be before these social distancing restrictions will be lifted. With no end in sight, it’s important for grandparents and grandkids to find ways of staying connected during this period and not miss out on the beneficial effects a close relationship can engender.

With this in mind, here are a few tips for helping seniors maintain a connection with their grandchildren during the pandemic using web-based technology like FaceTime, email, and instant messaging (IM). And though video chats, texts, and IMs will never replace in-person visits, they offer one of the most effective ways of keeping those relationships—and everyone’s spirits—as strong as possible during these dark times.

1. Reading Stories

One way for grandparents to feel more connected with their grandkids is to read stories over video chat or smartphone. Choose a favorite book at the grandchild’s reading level, and take turns reading pages. This can give the grandchild the added benefits of improving reading skills, building their vocabulary, and helping them develop their speaking abilities. By picking a regular time to call and read together each week, it can also give both of them something to look forward to.

2. Playing Games

Even though in-person visits are too risky right now, family game night can still happen. Grandparents and grandkids have many options for online gaming, including even classic board games, such as Scrabble, Monopoly, and Clue. Like their traditional counterparts, online games also help children develop math and vocabulary skills while they are having fun.

3. Emailing, Texting, and Instant Messaging

Texts, emails, and IMs sent to one another on a regular basis can help grandparents stay connected and up-to-date with the latest developments in their grandkids’ lives. To catch up with one another, seniors can talk about what is happening in their lives and ask the grandkids to discuss the latest events in their own lives. When grandchildren use texts and emails, it also helps them practice writing out their thoughts and work on their spelling and grammar.

4. Mailing Letters or Postcards

These days, letter writing almost seems like lost art. But sending personal letters and postcards is a great way for grandparents and grandchildren to connect with one another. Handwritten letters and postcards can also be prized keepsakes that will help grandchildren remember their grandparents long after they are gone. When possible, children should be encouraged to hand-write letters and postcards instead of typing and printing them out. They can also decorate their letters or postcards with drawings and art.

5. Group Video Chats and Phone Calls

Tech-savvy grandparents can use video chat apps like Skype, FaceTime, and Google Duo to visit with the grandkids in a group setting, where everyone can see and interact with one another. Video chats also allow grandparents to see how their grandchildren age over time, which can be extremely rapid during their first few years of life. Even extremely young children like toddlers can participate in video chats, which can help them bond with their senior loved ones, even across vast distances.

And if video chats aren’t something a senior feels comfortable with, a similar experience can be achieved simply by using a cell phone or even a landline set to speaker mode. These video chats and phone calls can be scheduled, so they occur on an ongoing basis, such as every Sunday evening, which gives everyone something to look forward to. Even short, 15 to 20-minute calls made on a regular basis can help grandparents and grandkids feel more connected and less isolated.

For the Love of Your Family

With coronavirus infections and deaths currently surging to record levels, it’s more critical than ever for parents and grandparents to ensure their estate planning is complete and up-to-date, including naming both short and long-term guardians for your minor children. If you’ve yet to name guardians for your kids, you should do so immediately, and you can get this process started right now using our free online resource, known as the Kids Protection Plan®.

In addition to ensuring your kids will be protected and provided for no matter what, the estate planning process itself can offer a unique opportunity to enhance your connection with your children and grandchildren. Communicating clearly about what you want to happen in the event of your death or incapacity (and talking with your kids about what they want) can foster a deep bond and sense of intimacy.

Though such conversations can feel awkward, with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can help guide and support you in having these intimate discussions in an age-and-stage appropriate way with your children. In fact, our clients consistently share that after undergoing our estate planning process, they feel a deeper sense of connection with their children. Schedule an appointment with us today to get started.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.