Estate Planning

10 Estate Planning DONT's

By Greg Herman-Giddens

From a presentation I gave last week for Duke University's OLLI program's course on retirement and wealth management, here are 10 things NOT to do in terms of estate planning:

1. Jointly own large bank or brokerage accounts.
2. Leave assets directly to a minor child or incapacitated person.
3. Forget to fund your living trust.
4. Name your estate as the beneficiary of your IRA or other retirement account.
5. Forget to have your plan reviewed every few years.
6. Forget to coordinate your beneficiary designations with your plan
7. Lose your original documents (it happens more often than you would think).
8. Rely on non-experts for advice.
9. Underestimate the value of using an estate planning specialist.
10. Use the ostrich approach to estate planning.  (This is the most common method of planning/lack thereof!)

The reasons for most of these is obvious, others maybe not so much.  The best thing you can do to learn more is to consult with an estate planning attorney.

Full post as published by North Carolina Estate Planning Blog on March 14, 2011 (boomark / email).