Muskegon Estate Law

Planning for the inevitable future.

Your family and your estate are unique. Creating an estate plan is your opportunity to provide a road map for how your wishes should be carried out both during your lifetime and in the future. A complete estate plan should address the possibility of incapacity for yourself or a loved one and asset administration, as well as what happens after death. The Gravis Law estate planning team in Muskegon will help you create an effective and efficient plan that reflects your goals and wishes – in language that you can understand!

We gather information about your family, assets and your wishes and intent, in order to make informed and appropriate recommendations for a plan that best achieves your goals. In many cases, at the initial consultation we can quote a flat fee for preparing your estate planning documents so you know in advance how much our services will cost. For more complex estates, we may need to bill hourly for complex assets such as a business, tax planning and other special issues.

Issues to be addressed include:

1. who gets your stuff when you are gone,
2. who is responsible for making sure your wishes are carried out,
3. who will make decisions for you if you cannot make your wishes known,
4. what kind of extraordinary care do you want or not want if you are in a terminal condition or permanently unconscious,
5. who will take care of your minor children if you cannot,
6. what if one of your intended beneficiaries has a disability,
7. will your heirs need to pay taxes on their inheritance,
8. what if there is someone you want to exclude, and
9. Remember every family is different!

The Basics

A complete estate plan should include three main documents:

• Last Will and Testament
• Power of Attorney
• Health Care Directive or Living Will

Elder Law

Elder Law encompasses a wide range of matters affecting older and aging or disabled clients and their families. An Elder Law attorney in Muskegon specializes in the federal, state and local laws and regulations that can affect:

• Medicaid planning,
• Long term care,
• Guardianship/Conservatorship
• Plus, all the normal estate planning basics discussed above.

Trusts

Trusts are a means of controlling how and when someone has access to assets. Every trust has a document creating the trust and spelling out who is responsible for managing the assets (the Trustee) and instructions for that Trustee on how the assets are to be managed and distributed. There are lots of different kinds of trusts and they can be set up in different ways.

Trusts can be set up in a will to be established later or can be effective immediately. Common uses for trusts are:

• Living Trusts: to manage assets during your lifetime,
• Minor Trusts: to manage assets for children,
• Educational trusts: to pay for school, college or training,
• Special Needs trusts: for disabled persons or those who may be receiving government benefits,
• Spendthrift trusts: to protect assets from a beneficiary’s creditors,
• Marital Trusts: usually for tax planning or in blended families.

Charitable Giving

If you would like to support a cause or organization that is close to your heart, that can be incorporated into your estate plan in a number of ways. If you want to see the effects of your donation we can propose lifetime gifting options and ideas. If you want to make a gift in your will, we can advise on the most effective ways to do so. We also work with clients to ensure the charity is a qualified organization if tax planning is involved and propose language designed to ensure your gifting goals are effective.

Taxes

Always taxes! There are estate taxes, also known as inheritance or death taxes. There are gift taxes, income taxes (particularly for retirement assets). These rules and laws have been changed and amended at a dizzying pace in the past few years.

For larger estates, estate taxes may be an issue at both the federal government and some state governments.

The United States federal government wants to collect estate taxes from estates of over $11,580,000.00 in 2020. Each state has their owns rules for estate taxes, some states do not collect an estate tax when someone dies (currently Idaho, Florida and Michigan do not, for Gravis offices), but Washington and Oregon do, at far lower dollar amounts than the federal government.

We know how to structure your will or trust to maximize your estate tax exemptions and can advise on the tax consequences of your estate plan.

Next Steps

Call to schedule a consultation with one of our highly qualified estate planning attorneys in Muskegon. Providing a completed Will Information Sheet before your consultation helps your attorney prepare any additional questions and information in advance.