Many people mistakenly believe that estate planning only involves the writing of a simple will. While that may have been true twenty years ago, today most estate plans consider more than just the disposition of a person's assets at their death. A quality estate plan considers the potential taxes and fees involved in any disposition and sets up a contingency plan to ensure that your wishes regarding your health care, treatment, and the management of your assets during any period of incapacity are followed.

Financially, a thorough estate plan coordinates what happens to your home, your investments, your business, your life insurance, your employee benefits, and other property in the event you become disabled or die. Personally, a thorough estate plan includes specific directions to carry out your wishes regarding health care matters so that if you are ever unable to give the directions yourself, someone you have pre-selected can do it for you.

At the heart of every estate plan is what we call the "core documents." These core documents include a will, a revocable trust (also referred to as a "living trust"), a health care proxy and a power of attorney. Together, these four documents provide instructions on how your assets should be managed and distributed during a period of incapacity or at your death, and provide instructions on your end-of-life health care wishes.

Beyond the core documents, there are a number of more sophisticated estate planning documents that can be used to help preserve your assets for future generations, reduce or postpone any estate or gift tax liability, and plan for succession of your business. Such sophisticated estate planning documents may include irrevocable trusts, generation-skipping trusts, qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), charitable remainder and lead trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies and grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs).

To ensure that an estate plan works as intended, it is not only essential that your plan be reviewed every few years, but also that your assets be properly titled to maximize the tax efficient results anticipated by your plan. For example, if a married couple with an estate plan incorporating all of the core documents discussed above have a combined wealth of $4 million, it would appear that each of them would be eligible for the Federal Estate Tax Exemption, which is currently $2 million per individual, upon their deaths. In reality, however, if $3 million of those assets are in the husband's name individually, and only $1 million are in the wife's name, a portion of the Federal Estate Tax exemption would be wasted should the wife predecease her husband, leaving a portion of the husband's estate susceptible to the estate tax at his death. Accordingly, it is imperative that the titling of your assets is considered in drafting and implementing your estate plan. At B&M, our emphasis on a team approach allows us to work seamlessly with our clients' financial advisors to ensure that their assets are properly titled and that their estate plan works as intended.

An individual may also want to consider as part of their estate plan what is commonly referred to as long-term care planning. As the name implies, this type of planning addresses the potential or anticipated need for some type of long-term assistance with daily living activities in the future. For many people this planning considers Medicaid regulations in conjunction with an individual or spouse's possible entry into a nursing home facility. However, long-term care planning goes well beyond "Medicaid" planning. For individuals who do not consider nursing home care an attractive goal, an array of other options are available to make the transition into retirement and beyond as smooth as possible. These options include long-term care insurance, home health aides, and reverse mortgages.

At B&M we dedicate ourselves to helping each client realize their individual goals and will work with you to create a customized plan that will help you achieve those goals. Our commitment to our clients does not end at the execution of an estate or business succession plan; rather, we will continue to work with you to ensure that your plans evolve to meet any new needs resulting from life events such as the birth of a child, moving to another state, divorce, dissolution or sale of a business, or the death of a loved one.

Our estate planning services include: