If you are married, one of your primary estate planning objectives is likely to ensure that your spouse is protected if something happens to you. While this sounds like a fairly straightforward goal, protecting your spouse requires you to create a comprehensive and all-inclusive estate plan that can protect your spouse financially, emotionally, and legally in the event of your untimely demise or incapacity. Toward that end, the Los Angeles attorneys at Schomer Estate & Wealth Advisors discuss how to protect your spouse in your estate plan.
Estate Plan Tools and Strategies that Can Protect Your Spouse
If you have been married for any length of time, you and your spouse likely do things to protect each other on a daily basis without even thinking about it. When it comes to protecting your spouse in the event of your death or incapacity, however, you will have to be more intentional. Fortunately, your estate plan offers numerous ways to protect your spouse legally, emotionally, and financially. While the tools and strategies you ultimately incorporate into your estate plan should only be chosen after consulting with your estate planning attorney, it helps to learn some of the many ways in which your estate plan can help protect your spouse, such as:
- Protecting your spouse from litigation. Sadly, the death or incapacity of a family member often spurs costly and emotionally exhausting litigation. Your estate plan, however, offers numerous opportunities to prevent your spouse from having to deal with litigation. Having a valid Will or trust agreement in place when you die is essential to warding off probate litigation. Adding a Letter of Instruction that explains potentially controversial provisions in your Will or trust can also help deter litigation, as can including a no contest clause in your Will or trust agreement. In short, such a clause provides a beneficiary an incentive for not contesting your Will or trust and provides the threat of losing a sure-fire inheritance if they choose to move forward with litigation.
- Protecting your spouse financially. Your estate plan can be the key to protecting your spouse from potential financial hardships following your death or during your incapacity. Failing to create even a basic estate plan can result in leaving behind an intestate estate, essentially permitting the state to shape your estate plan using the state intestate succession laws. Dying intestate is not the best way to ensure that your spouse is financially secure. If your spouse is your sole surviving beneficiary, he/she will likely inherit your entire estate; however, if you have living descendants, the distribution of your assets can become more complex. Furthermore, without a plan in place your spouse may be forced to wait a considerable amount of time before assets intended for his/her use are made available. Worse still, a sizeable portion of your estate could be lost to estate taxes if you did not create an estate plan and include tax avoidance strategies in that plan. The good news is that a comprehensive estate plan ensures that your spouse receives the intended inheritance promptly and without undue tax burdens.
- Protecting your spouse emotionally. Unfortunately, there is no way to completely shield your spouse from the emotional impact that your death or incapacity will have. There are, however, some things you can do to help protect your spouse by limiting the need to make difficult decisions during a time when emotions are running strong. One thing you can do is to incorporate an incapacity planning component into your estate plan that includes the execution of advance directives. An advance directive allows you to make important medical decisions now so that your spouse is not forced to make them while he/she is not emotionally prepared to make them. You can also include funeral and burial planning in your estate plan. Not only does this protect your spouse from the emotional struggle caused by the need to make difficult decisions right after the loss of a spouse, but it also ensures that your wishes will be honored.
Let Us Help You Protect Your Spouse
For more information, please join us for an upcoming FREE seminar. If you are ready to create an estate plan that protect your spouse, contact the experienced Los Angeles estate planning attorneys at Schomer Estate & Wealth Advisors by calling (310) 337-7696 to schedule an appointment.
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