You’ve worked hard for yourself and your loved ones your whole life. You sacrificed, planned, saved, and succeeded. As a result, you have money, property, and other assets.
Now, you want to ensure your estate is distributed fairly to friends and family. You also might want to make sure minor children have a guardian if something happens to you and your spouse.
If you don’t do proper estate planning with the help of an experienced law firm, much of your hard work can be turned over to Uncle Sam.
Experienced estate planning lawyers have many tools to help with Georgia estate planning. Your attorney can assist with a living trust, wills, and advance directives wherever you are in Georgia.
Georgia state law lays out several ways to safeguard your estate.
Sometimes people get ill enough that they can’t make their own healthcare decision. With an advanced directive, you can make your health-related wishes known ahead of time.
Your Atlanta estate planning attorney can appoint a health care agent and get you treatment as your will states, even if you cannot make your own decisions at the end of your life.
Power of attorney is another essential tool explained in Georgia law. You can nominate someone to be your legal representative, and that individual can make all vital decisions in your place. Depending on the guidelines you lay out in your estate plan, they can make most decisions for you.
There is a financial and medical power of attorney. Your power of attorney will have the final say depending on how you plan things. A power of attorney can be a spouse, sibling, child, or friend.
When you’re alive, you and your lawyer can plan the division of assets among your loved ones and friends. No probate process is needed with a revocable living trust. This legal option lets you decide who gets your assets and how much after you pass away.
Putting your assets in a living trust means skirting a possibly long and expensive probate process.
A trusted estate planning lawyer in Atlanta can help you divide your assets. Then you can state how you want your assets divided.
To file a will in Georgia, these are the requirements:
It might be tempting to go it alone with estate planning. But who doesn’t want to save on those attorney fees?
However, the risks of do-it-yourself estate planning are many. Let’s review a few.
The more complex your estate and assets, the more legal documents there will be, and therefore the better it is to hire an attorney.
There are many matters to consider when doing estate planning:
A DIY estate planning form may not cover those complexities. But your Atlanta estate planning attorney can handle these matters and provide the legal services you need.
All states have different laws for estate planning. The rules deal with who can and cannot be in a trust or will. Laws also vary on who you can name as your financial or healthcare power of attorney.
Your attorney will also be updated on every recent update to Georgia estate laws.
Without an estate planning attorney, a lot of things can go wrong:
Your attorney can help you avoid these pitfalls. That way, you can leave more of your estate to your heirs.
Estate planning is essential to protect your loved ones from living and death probate. A skilled Atlanta estate planning attorney also can provide peace of mind by minimizing or eliminating federal estate taxes.
Schedule a consultation to discuss your Georgia estate planning case. We’ll game out your estate planning options and recommend the best strategy.
Each case is different, but we can share what clients typically struggle with when they make their initial calls to us:
The financial aspect of family law matters can be terrifying because it has been historically known as a black hole of billing with retainers and hourly charges for things like emails and texts. Peel back further uncertainty by Estimating Your Legal Fees.
While other firms might tell you “there is no way to predict the total cost of a divorce,” we can tell you with certainty that those smoke and mirrors will not be a part of your care at Edwards Family Law. We provide value with a high degree of peace of mind through conscientious costs for our care. Learn more about our Flat Fee Family Law and Estate Planning Services.
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Regina is such a professional and knowledgeable attorney. I will gladly refer client to her with their family legal needs.
Professional and attentive staff. Our office has partnered with Edwards and Edwards on real estate closings and all good experiences.
Highly Recommend!!! Regina and her team provide an incredibly smooth client-experience where you know exactly what is expected of you, and what they are going to do for you. Their communication policy is odd at first, but results in excellent communication, they have tremendous knowledge of the law, and do what they say the will do.
It’s possible to avoid expensive probate administration processes when transferring some assets when you die by using beneficiary designations. Laws vary on the assets that can be transferred without the probate process.
Do you have a titled asset, such as a home? Do you want your loved ones to avoid court headaches if you die? You may want to talk to an attorney at our experienced law firm about a revocable living trust.
In some cases, yes. It can be contested if there was an undue influence when you made the will or if it wasn’t properly executed.
Curious about how you can secure your family’s future? No one likes to think about what will...
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