YES – whether your estate is large or small, and regardless of age. A young family should plan for the care and support of their children. Someone with a small estate can benefit from planning important health care and personal decisions, such as who will receive your assets after your death and who should manage your estate. A person with a larger estate can also benefit from strategies to preserve your assets for your beneficiaries and reduce estate taxes.

Estate planning with Sorgi Law Group is inexpensive and tailored to YOUR needs. We won’t up-sell you with documents and services that you don’t need.

Probably not. Wills are just one very small piece of a comprehensive estate plan. Canned wills and trusts from self-service legal websites cannot discuss your situation and answer your questions to ensure that your documents work for you. Further, even a good requires that your estate go through the Probate Process, which is time consuming, expensive, public, and places an unnecessary burden on your loved ones. A will also cannot address important issues that affect you during your lifetime.

We are a multi-generation family firm, and one of our attorneys will always be available to work with you on any changes or amendments you want to make.

A reverse mortgage is loan available to homeowners who are 62 years or older that enables them to convert part of the equity in their home into cash. This mortgage product can help retirees with limited income use the accumulated wealth in their homes to cover basic monthly living expenses and pay for health care. Reverse mortgages can accordingly be a very useful tool in estate planning.

Instead of making monthly payments to a lender, as with a traditional mortgage, the lender makes payments to the borrower in a reverse mortgage. You are not required to pay back the loan or make any payments until the home is sold or otherwise vacated.

When a loved one passes away, his or her estate often goes through a court-managed process called probate or estate administration where the assets of the deceased are managed and distributed. If your loved one owned his or her assets through a properly drafted and funded Living Trust, it is likely that no court-managed administration is necessary, though the successor trustee needs to administer the distribution of the deceased. The length of time needed to complete probate of an estate depends on the size and complexity of the estate as well as the rules and schedule of the local probate court.

Every probate estate is unique, but most involve the following steps:

• Filing of a petition with the proper probate court
• Notice to heirs under the will or to statutory heirs (if no will exists)
• Petition to appoint Executor (in the case of a will) or Administrator for the estate
• Inventory and appraisal of estate assets by Executor/Administrator
• Payment of estate debt to rightful creditors
• Sale of estate assets
• Payment of estate taxes, if applicable
• Final distribution of assets to heirs

Assets with beneficiary designations such as a life insurance policy or annuity payable directly to a named beneficiary need not be transferred to your Living Trust. Furthermore, money from IRAs, Keoghs, 401(k) accounts and most other retirement accounts transfer automatically, outside probate, to the persons named as beneficiaries. Bank accounts that are set up as payable-on-death account (POD for short) or an “in trust for” account (a “Totten Trust”) with a named beneficiary also pass to that beneficiary without having to be titled into your trust. It is important, however, to seek the counsel of an experienced estate planning attorney who can advise on and assist with transferring necessary assets to your trust.

While Special Needs Trusts are typically established by parents for their disabled children, any third party can establish a Special Needs Trust for the benefit of a disabled beneficiary. It is important to seek the assistance of competent counsel when creating a Special Needs Trust because a poorly drafted Trust can easily be subject to “invasion” by the government agencies that provide benefits. Our law firm has the experience and the expertise to establish effective Special Needs Trusts for anyone who wishes to provide for a disabled beneficiary.