Estate Planning

At Allegis Law, we recognize the important part that your will and trust(s) play in your estate plan, and we’re committed to ensuring that yours suit your specific requirements. Your will contains your instructions regarding the distribution of your assets and can also specifically address the matter of guardianship for any minor children. Any assets you include in a revocable living trust will not only remain under your management during your lifetime but will also bypass the probate process when they pass to your heirs.

Digital asset planning refers to your instructions regarding digital assets, which can include all the following:

• The information necessary to access your online accounts
• The documents and photos you store online
• Items of value, such as cryptocurrency.

Our digital legacies have become far more complex over the years, and the knowledgeable estate planning attorney at Allegis Law has the technical savvy to help protect yours.

Estate tax planning involves minimizing your estate's exposure to taxation and facilitating the smooth transition of your wealth to your heirs when the time arrives. Allegis Law is proactive in relation to estate tax planning, which translates to stronger protections.

While trusts and other estate planning tools can help you keep the bulk of your estate out of probate, the specifics of your will must be addressed in probate – along with any assets that aren't included in a trust or aren’t beneficiary based, such as:

• Pay-on-death designations for bank accounts
• Rights of survivorship for real estate

When you work with Allegis Law, you can rest easy in the knowledge that – when the time comes – your estate administrator or personal representative will be well prepared to manage your estate planning tools according to your instructions.

If your estate includes a business, you'll also need to address business succession planning, which is the process of preparing your enterprise for the future and strategizing its transition to new leadership. The legal team at Allegis Law has a wealth of experience helping business owners like you craft solid business succession plans.

A living trust allows you to hold specific assets in trust, which affords important legal protections that include:

• Minimizing tax consequences
• Avoiding probate
• Streamlining the transfer process
• Bolstering privacy

In a will-based estate plan, your last will and testament takes center stage. Your will allows you to accomplish all the following:

• Specifically outlining your final wishes
• Setting up guardianship of your minor children
• Addressing those assets that don't assign beneficiaries and aren't held in a trust

In our estate plans, we typically use a living trust to outline your wishes for how property is managed both during your lifetime and after you pass. In a living trust based estate plan, we use a pour-over will that simply instructs your executor to “pour-over” any assets held outside the trust at time of death to your living trust. Then, once the assets are in your trust, your trustee will manage and distribute assets based on the terms of your trust.

Appointing a power of attorney ensures that someone you trust will be there to handle your financial and legal matters – according to your instructions – in the event that you can’t. POA can also be a temporary assignment, such as for signing documents when you aren’t available.

Health care directives are also known as living wills and advance directives, and they serve the primary role of laying out your instructions for the medical procedures and care that you do or that you don't want in the event you're not able to communicate your preferences.

Some assets, such as life insurance policies and retirement accounts, are beneficiary based. This means that they pass directly to their named beneficiaries rather than proceeding through the probate process. Keeping beneficiary designations up to date is a critical aspect of estate planning.

While you can create a trust to hold and manage assets on behalf of your minor children, you'll need to address the matter of their guardianship in both your will and powers of attorney. Guardianship refers to the adult whom you choose to care for your children in the unlikely event they lose both their parents prior to reaching adulthood.

Business owners need to establish instructions regarding operations as well as your decisions regarding how your business interests will pass to whomever you choose, which can be a loved one, a family member, or a business partner.

Estate planning refers to the process of addressing the assets that make up your estate, which can include all the following and more:

• Real estate
• Money
• Financial tools, such as stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, and insurance policies
• Business enterprises
• Art works, collections, any anything else of value

The idea is to smoothly transfer these properties to the recipients of your choice while mitigating taxes, protecting assets, and expediting the process, and the right estate planning attorney for you can help make all this happen.

Without an estate plan in place, the assets and properties you've acquired over your lifetime will all go through the probate process, which will prolong their distribution to your heirs and tends to be a more costly process. Further, if you die without a will, your estate will be distributed according to Utah's laws of intestacy, which may not align with your wishes

Everyone is well advised to have a will in place. While estate planning has a fancy ring to it, it's actually a basic tool that anyone can employ to help protect the assets they've worked hard to amass – regardless of their estate’s size. The goal is ensuring that your assets pass smoothly to your chosen heirs when the time comes.

Your will is your opportunity to accomplish each of the following:

• Clearly voicing your wishes
• Assigning assets that are not addressed by other means to your chosen beneficiaries
• Addressing the matter of your minor children's guardianship

When it comes to estate planning, there are often loose ends to tie up, and your will ensures that you – rather than the court – remain in charge.

A trust is a legal tool that can hold and protect assets in particular ways. A living trust is one that you create during your lifetime, and if it's a revocable living trust, you retain the right to control the included assets until your death. Living trusts are a popular estate planning tool that can shield included assets from the probate process and provide specific instructions for the use of assets both during your life and after you pass away.

Probate is the court-guided process of administering estates and transferring property post-death. The basics include all the following:

1. Validation of the will
2. Appointment of an executor – if there isn’t one named in the will
3. An inventory of the estate's assets
4. Payment of remaining debts
5. Distribution of assets

Asset protection as it relates to estate planning refers to taking the necessary actions to protect the assets that make up your estate from any undue outside pressure that may arise. This can be in relation to an overzealous debt collector, a divorce, or a potential business liability.

An experienced estate planning attorney – like Rustin Diehl at Allegis Law – can help you maximize asset protection by including special provisions within your estate planning documents to protect your wealth after it’s transferred to your beneficiaries.