Category Archives: Estate Planning

One of the two main functions of your will is to determine who gets your stuff. Now, when we say stuff that means everything from your house to your car to your business to your investments and all the way down to the $2 knick knacks you have sitting on that shelf on the wall. Some of these things will have a high value and some of them are worth mere pennies. Some of them have tons of sentimental value and some of them don’t. Your will decides how to split them up. As an aside, many of these larger items in terms of monetary value can be taken care of with the appropriate deeds and beneficiaries, but anything that is not covered by a deed or beneficiary will be taken care of in your will.

Within your will you can decide how your stuff gets split. Some people may say that they just want their possessions to be split evenly between their kids. Alternatively, you may want to treat your kids differently. Maybe one of them helped you much more than the others and you want to financially reward them. Your will is the place to do that. If you want your church or a charity to share in your wealth, you would name them in your will. 

What Happens if I Die Without a Will?

Now, you may say that you just don’t care how your stuff gets split up. Honestly, your kids or heirs may not care either. Unfortunately, that’s not generally what happens. What seems to happen more often than any of us would like to admit is it starts family fights. When there is a fight, it generally doesn’t end well. You see, a fight needs to be settled by someone (ie a judge in a courtroom) and you also need to have someone fight along with you (an attorney). Both of cost time and money. All that wealth that you worked so hard to build up ends up in the hands of people other than those that you want. Those arguments may be avoided by properly writing your will within your estate plan. Yes, hiring an attorney to write your will costs money, but we can assure you that the cost for a will is less than the cost to fight over it!

So What Happens to My Stuff When I Die?

So, what goes into writing your will so that the right people get your stuff? Frankly, writing it is the easy part. Deciding the best course of action through thoughtful decision-making is the hard part. If you’re giving your wealth to your adult children, you likely know their personalities better than anyone else. It’s your responsibility to decide whether they are able to handle receiving a large sum of money or if it will be spent in ways that you don’t approve of. You can decide that they get their payout at a certain age or if they get it right away. 

When you decide to write your will, this is the area that you will spend the most time on. It’s important to not only write your will, but to also do it correctly. The worst thing that you can do is not put thought into it and cause more problems that you solved. We can’t stress enough that working with an attorney (even if it’s not us) is essential. When you do, you have a resource that can draw on the knowledge of what other people have done and what tends to work the best.

Contact Kiecker Law

Contact Kiecker Law to get started on your estate succession plan today.

What is a will and what does it do? It sounds like such a simple question. It should be, but the details often get lost in emotional discussions such as estate planning. As a law firm, we sometimes forget that what is an everyday discussion for us and that we take for granted is not a normal thing for others to talk about. Whether you haven’t every talked about your will or you have done all of your estate planning, reviewing what a will is and what it does is a good idea.

What is a Will?

To put it plainly, a will is a legal document that answers two main questions:

1. What happens to your stuff?
2. What happens to your kids when you aren’t there to protect them?

Like mentioned above, we sometimes take these conversations for granted, but it can be a difficult conversation.  Not only do you have to ask yourself difficult questions that you may not know the answer to, but you have to admit your own mortality. Needless to say, that’s not fun. In fact, it can be downright scary. We don’t mean to give any more excuses to put off your estate planning any longer, but we find that there is no use sugar coating it to make our clients artificially feel better. In fact, you probably should feel a bit uncomfortable in making decisions that are so consequential to the people you most love. They are difficult, but important conversations and the worst thing that we and you can do is pretend that they aren’t. It’s OK to be scared. It’s OK to even be a little intimidated. That’s where your trusted advisors come in.

How to Write a Legal Will

The right attorney will guide you through that process. Like we mentioned before, we have these conversations on a daily basis. As a client, you can and should take advantage of that. Every person’s situation is different, but there are very few types of situations that your attorney hasn’t seen. You have the ability to use that knowledge and experience to your advantage. That is why you want to be comfortable with the attorney you choose to work with. We would love to say that Kiecker Law is the best firm for everyone (and, in our minds, we are), but even if we aren’t we want you to have comfort in knowing that your wishes are going to be honored.

Writing a Last Will and Testement

So, in a very brief way, we answered the question. What is a will and what does it do? Yes, it’s a legal document and decides where your stuff goes and what happens with your kids. We just talked a little bit of the process of what it takes to write a will, but in the next couple of months we will talk more specifically about the questions a will answers. We’ll talk about how we decide who gets your stuff and some things you might want to take into consideration. We’ll talk about what happens to your kids (if they are minors) and some things you want to keep in mind while making that decision. And we’ll talk about what happens if you don’t write a will. Throughout it all, we’ll give you a few thoughts on how we do things and some things that you might keep in mind regardless of what attorney you work with.

In our last blog we talked about “THE BAD PROBATE”. This time we want to shift gears and look at “THE GOOD PROBATE”. Again, we’re not here to pull the wool over your eyes. There is no such thing as a fun probate process. There are just really painful ones and less painful ones. In fact, if done correctly, your estate won’t even need to go through probate. The correct planning and documents will transfer ownership of your possessions without any court proceedings at all.

The less painful methods have all your instructions laid out about what you want done in your estate plan. It lets your loved ones know who should get what. It lets them get more of what you have built up. And it helps them avoid court rooms. So, you may ask, what does your estate plan include and how does it accomplish these things?

Wills, Trusts, and Deeds

We talk about a will and a trust. Your will guides your executor (the person you want to handle it) to know who should get what. Don’t get us wrong, the government does have a plan set up for you, but you must go to court to get everything approved and that costs money. If you have a will, your plans are already known so a judge doesn’t have to decide whether it is fair or not. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair, what you want to happen is the only thing that matters. You get to decide who gets what and when they get it (specifically if you have children).

In certain scenarios, you may want to have a trust. Some scenarios that could drive you needing this are the size of your estate, whether you have a special needs child or if you want to gift a sum of money to a charity in a specific fashion among other things. If privacy is important to you, a trust may keep what’s happening within your estate private so only your family (and a few select court officials) know what is happening with your affairs.

Probate and Estate Planning

As we always say, a good estate plan also includes a financial power of attorney and a health care directive. In terms of worrying about a probate, neither of these documents will have an effect, but we feel it would not be responsible for us to leave them out when discussing estate plans. They are useful tools that should be considered.

Additionally, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using the proper deeds for your real estate. A fantastic tool that you can use within real estate is a Transfer on Death Deed, or a TODD. What this type of deed will do is automatically transfer your house or any other land to the correct person or people when you pass away. Again, you don’t need to worry about going to a probate court for them to decide that what happens. It’s already known by using this document. It’s very helpful and it’s certainly less expensive than going through the probate process.

Should I Consult a Probate Lawyer?

Something that isn’t often spoken about is making sure the beneficiaries on your retirement accounts and life insurance are properly listed. Often times, people just put a name down. In all actuality, they should be working in conjunction with their will and/or trust. The language to use is specific to you and can also save a lot of headache.

Essentially, there are a lot of tools out there to help you pass along your possessions without having to deplete the value for your loved ones. We strongly encourage everyone to go through the process of planning and reviewing their planning if you have already completed it. A little bit of pain for you now will prevent a lot of pain for your loved ones later.

What is Probate? Probate is simply a legal process that any estate with an asset worth more than $75,000 must go through. Inevitably, you’re going to hear from Forbes and Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal and your preferred regional newspaper about how horrible it can be. And, we’re not going to lie to you, many times it is horrible.

We don’t believe in pulling the wool over your eyes. We want you to make the most informed decision that you possibly can. That’s why we’re going to explain to you what can happen if you don’t do appropriate estate planning. And then we’re going to explain what you need to do to avoid making probate a difficult, expensive and painful process.

How Much Does Probate Cost?

Let’s start out by explaining the why. There is no hard and fast answer to how much probate costs. We’ve seen estimates from as low as 2% to as high as 10% of your estate.

That may not seem like a lot on it’s face but remember that includes all your assets that don’t have beneficiaries listed on them. So, that excludes things like your IRAs, 401(k)s and life insurance. What it includes though is your house, any land you own, any stocks that you own, your cars, and any of your personal property.

Probate Court

Again, that may not seem like a lot, but it WILL start adding up. Take for example this scenario…. the median cost of a house in the state of Minnesota is roughly $250,000. Depending on where you live that could be substantially higher or lower, of course, but we’ll use that as a starting point. Add in your two vehicles at $15,000 each and the value of your personal property (jewelry, lawn equipment, clothes, etc.) at roughly $50,000. Assuming you don’t have any bank accounts or investment accounts of any value, your estate is suddenly worth $330,000.

Between court fees, attorney fees, executor fees and various other expenses, your estate could be reduced by between $6,500 and $23,000. Now, depending on where you’re at in your life, that could have some pretty sobering effects. If you have minor kids, that means they will get that much less to support them. If you’re plan is to donate your money to charity or church, they will get that much less to do their good deeds. Whatever it is you want, the person or people that you want to benefit, will get much less benefit. Add to that, there’s always the potential of infighting about who should get what and it doesn’t lead to a pretty picture. You can calculate the size of your estate on your own and use this chart to approximate the cost of your own situation.

Probate Cost Chart

That may not be fair, but that’s the reality. This is what we call “THE BAD PROBATE”.

So, now that we have also sufficiently worried and scared you, what can you do? Like we said, it doesn’t have to be that way. Proper planning and continual planning will help to avoid some of those headaches. So, what does that mean?

Avoiding Probate

Proper planning is different for every person and family. To start out with, you need to get all your estate planning documents in order. This is going to include a will and maybe a trust. A good estate plan will also include a financial power of attorney and health care directive. They won’t do anything in terms of the probate but should be included. Depending on your situation and your goals, you may also need to have a trust. Additionally, you’ll need to make sure that all the beneficiaries on your life insurance and retirement accounts.

Additionally, you should review your plan every 3-5 years to make sure it still meets your wishes and evaluate your current situation. You may or may not need to change anything, but, at the very least, you should review it.

Again, probate can be a scary process for those you leave behind. It doesn’t have to be though. Leaving instructions for what you want done should make you sleep easier at night. You can know that your wishes will be known and followed, and you can also know that you’ve made things easier on those you care most about.