Estate Planning
Transfers, accounting, financial coordination
Estate planning involves creating a strategy for managing and transferring one’s assets before and after death, utilizing tools such as wills, trusts, gifts, and powers of attorney. Trusts can be revocable, allowing the grantor to modify them during their lifetime, or irrevocable, which cannot be easily changed once established.
Additionally, advance directives provide instructions regarding an individual’s health care preferences. This comprehensive approach ensures that assets are distributed according to one’s wishes while minimizing potential legal complications for beneficiaries.
Approach
Our firm’s multi-generational experience in Jacksonville allows us to efficiently protect and transfer assets through strategic estate planning. We focus on creating wills, trusts (both revocable and irrevocable), powers of attorney, and living wills, while also considering the benefits of family limited partnerships and LLCs.
Goal
Our goal is to develop a plan that works from estate, business, and personal perspectives. We emphasize the importance of selecting the right fiduciaries to execute the plan, discussing this crucial decision in the initial client meeting. For selected clients, our attorneys can also serve as fiduciaries.
Promise
We provide compassionate, personalized guidance to help you secure your family’s future and legacy. We are dedicated to simplifying the complexities of estate planning, trust administration, and asset protection. With an approach that prioritizes your unique needs and goals, we aim to ensure that your wishes are honored with clarity and efficiency.
A quick guide to our process
Step 1
Introduction
Our first step is to discuss with you your estate planning goals, which could include several of the following:
- Provide for my spouse, children and grandchildren
- Reduce estate taxes as much as possible
- Provide for those other than my spouse, children and grandchildren
- Provide for the orderly transfer of my business
- Protect assets from my creditors
- Protect assets from the creditors of my spouse, children and grandchildren
- Provide for a spouse, child or grandchild with special needs
Step 2
Planning
In estate planning, the most important decision to make is determining who will help carry out your plans. As a firm, that is where we start the estate planning process. Naming the right fiduciaries is discussed and determined in the initial client meeting. These can include:
- Trustees, both initial and successor
- Personal (estate) representatives, both initial and successor
- Guardians for any minor children
Step 3
Get to know you
We will then ask you to supply information about yourself, your family and your situation. Information will include:
- Personal and family data
- Any professional advisors you currently use such as accountants, financial planners or insurance agents
- Existing or relevant estate planning documents you may have such as
- Will
- Revocable living trust
- Irrevocable trust
- Charitable trust
- Durable power of attorney
- Living will
- Durable power of attorney for health care (or) health care surrogate designation
- Advance directive regarding burial/cremation
- Pre- or postnuptial agreement
- Organ donation document
- Financial information such as
- Real estate
- Bank accounts/investments
- Retirement plans
- Life insurance and annuities
- Personal property and any other assets
Guaranteed confidentiality
As in any communication between attorney and client, all discussions, planning and information collected are held in the strictest of confidence.