Estate Planning: Signing Your Estate Documents Is Not the Final Step

As holistic financial planners, all elements of one's finances take priority in our process. Whether it is protection planning, investment management, loan analysis, or estate planning, all parts play an integral role in creating a sound financial plan. 

Over the years, we found that getting clients to have their estate planning documents drafted and executed is the tallest of tasks. After all, it's not fun to think about, requires scheduling meetings with an attorney, and can cost thousands of dollars.

Despite the challenge, estate planning documents are essential since they can:

• Allow you to arrange the transfer of assets and property to the people or organizations that you want to benefit from your wealth
• Allow you to minimize estate taxes
• Allow you to nominate the people who will have a fiduciary responsibility to execute your wishes

Estate Planning Doesn't End When You Sign on the Dotted Line

Once you've met with an attorney and decided who will benefit from your wealth and how they will benefit, you will then sign your documents for them to become binding. After this is complete, your estate plan is not entirely in effect. Signing your estate documents is not the final step in your estate plan. 

Although some of your assets or property will be transferred through your will or revocable trust, not everything does. 

Upon execution of your estate plan, be sure to ask your attorney who should be named the beneficiary of your life insurance policies and retirement accounts. Life insurance and retirement accounts pass to beneficiaries by what are known as beneficiary designations. 

The structure of your estate planning and the beneficiaries within your will or trust will not direct where these assets go. It is your responsibility to make sure this part of your estate plan is organized and done effectively so that the structure of your estate plan works the way it was intended to. 

Sometimes the life insurance and retirement account beneficiaries should be different since the taxation of these accounts can differ upon your death.

The type of accounts that require beneficiary changes for many physicians and dentists are:

• Retirement Accounts: Traditional IRA, Rollover IRA, SEP IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), 401(a)
• Life Insurance: Individual Life Insurance, Group Life Insurance, Supplemental Group Life Insurance
• Other Accounts: Individual or Joint Transfer on Death Accounts (TOD), Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

TIP: Don't forget to update the beneficiaries through your employer benefits.

Remember, you may have plans, policies, and designations in place from earlier in your life that no longer reflect where you are now. To ensure that your beneficiary wishes are reflected across the board, you will need to review all of your accounts with beneficiary designations that haven't been updated since you finalized your will and estate documents.

SDT Is Here to Help

Estate planning can be a long-drawn-out process and can be cumbersome to overcome. Despite this, it plays an integral role in the foundation of a sound financial plan. 

If you're unsure how to get started, reach out to one of our financial planners to start a discussion. 

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