Estate Planning Attorney | Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Butte, Helena, Kalispell & Bozeman, MT
So What Really is Estate Planning?
Estate planning is more than just protecting and preserving your assets, it’s more than just wills and trusts. It’s taking your values and parenting wisdom, and making them timeless. It’s protecting your heirs both financially and emotionally. There’s a myth that estate planning and trusts are only for the rich, that is so untrue. Sometimes simple and affordable acts can have thoughtful effects, rippling for multiple generations to follow. And regardless of our wealth, we all want to prevent fracturing our family’s relationships due to disagreements and misunderstandings caused by an ambiguous wills, trusts, or lack thereof.
Often people think only of a will when they think of estate planning and forget there may come a time in their lives when they are no longer able to care for themselves or their spouse. Preparing for the future, also includes looking at potential disabilities and how those costs will be paid, as well as, who you trust to administer your estate and who can legally make decisionsfor you in the event that you become unable to make those decisions yourself.
No one likes to think of their own death or incapacity and as a result we procrastinate. As a Montana estate lawyer I cannot urge you enough to plan ahead. Having a well-thought out estate plan will prevent your family from having to deal with the cost, trouble, and heartache of the court system and allow you to maintain your personal dignity and independence for as long as possible. There are ways to spare your family undue burdens, with the use of trusts and incapacity documents such as powers of attorney and living wills.
We can also arrange for the administration of your estate to happen in a private proceeding, not a public proceeding such as probate. This way, what you choose to leave behind and to whom, remains private. Finally, we can make sure that all of this happens in an affordable, trouble-free way so that your wishes and values are honored, and so that your gifts and your life is remembered and respected…that is our firm’s definition of estate planning.
Call Us: (406) 549-0306