Rather than use one size fits all forms, we listen carefully and then develop an estate plan based on your wishes and circumstances. While saving tax is important, we don’t let it over shadow your other key concerns such as protecting a child with disabilities or providing for a spouse in second marriages.

A will should clearly designate intended beneficiaries and name executors. Where beneficiaries may be young or impaired estate plans also should include trusts and designate trustees and possibly guardians. Trusts may serve other purposes as well. Because the will is a key instrument in estate tax planning, most wills for married couples should include at least basic tax planning trusts while wealthier folks may be interested in more sophisticated tax planning.

Everyone should have a will, but most people don’t need the revocable living trusts that often are promoted to bypass probate or supposedly save tax and legal fees. Avoiding probate isn’t worth the extra cost, complexity, or inconvenience of a living trust because probate is a simple, inexpensive process in New Jersey. Tax-wise wills can save tax in similar manner to revocable living trusts, but living trusts can frustrate long term care planning. They also may entail ongoing maintenance costs in addition to hefty initial fees. Nevertheless, some living trusts serve legitimate purposes such as financial management when family can’t be trusted with power of attorney or simplifying administration when an individual owns real estate in several states.

Trusts are important components of many estate plans. Special/supplemental needs trusts can preserve government aid for individuals with disabilities that ordinary estate plans might jeopardize. Trusts are key tools to reduce tax, protect against remarriage, and occasionally to save assets from long term care costs. They also can protect against a beneficiary’s immaturity, impairments, creditors, and divorce and implement your views on spending gifts and inheritances or accumulating them for future generations. Finally, trusts can manage your finances, especially if capacity declines.

If you become impaired, an advance directive for health care can carry out your wishes on medical treatment, end of life decision making, pain killers, and other health concerns and name an agent to manage your health care. In contrast, bare bones living will forms available at hospitals or online only say whether to provide life support or resuscitate. A comprehensive power of attorney or financial management trust can secure your finances against taxes and long term care costs if your capacity declines. Unfortunately, generic power of attorney forms that some lawyers use actually may impede tax and long term care planning. Because it is too late to execute legal instruments once you lose capacity, expensive court proceedings to appoint a guardian may be the only option unless you execute an advance directive for health care and comprehensive power of attorney or financial management trust now.

Your legal instruments can’t meet your goals unless they evolve with your circumstances. Periodically, reviewing your estate plan with counsel can keep it up to date and avoid the ugly surprises that can come with stale legal instruments. For instance, different tax and financial provisions may be essential as wealth increases, retirement looms, or tax laws change. By the same token, will and trust terms and trustee and guardian appointments typically change as children grow up, marry, divorce, or start a family. Retirement, marriage, divorce, or a spouse’s death or decline can necessitate estate plan changes. Out of date advance directives for health care and powers of attorney may be rejected as stale.

A lawyer should review your estate planning documents whenever you change states because laws and tax rules differ from state to state. Some wills and trusts don’t require revision but relocation almost always calls for new advance directives for health care and powers of attorney.

New wills, deeds, and beneficiary designations are essential when a spouse may need long term care. Legal instruments made while healthy almost surely will disqualify a spouse for Medicaid and divert to long term care costs amounts a new estate plan could pass to children. However, to keep from doing more harm than good, the new estate plan must be drawn in accordance with arcane and complex Medicaid and elective share rules.

A surviving spouse may disinherit your children (especially if they are from a prior marriage). Even if your spouse’s current will provides for your kids, your spouse may change it after you pass away. Trusts, contracts to make a will, life insurance, and other techniques can protect your children against disinheritance, but only if you add them to your estate plan. However, legal advice is essential to understand that benefits and costs of each option and incorporate your preferences into your estate plan.