There is a wide variety of estate planning forms required when working with your estate and if you are thinking long and hard about setting up yours then this article will get you familiar with some of the forms you need.
Here’s just a shortlist of some of the forms you might need to consider. They include:
Basic Will
Health Care Power of Attorney
Living Will
Living Will Directive to Physicians
Living Will with Designation of Surrogate
Then there are estate planning packages and forms and while many will be free, some you will need to purchase:
Last Will and Testament Forms
Power of Attorney Packages and Forms
Living Will Forms
Living Trust Forms
Probate Forms
Estate Tax Forms
Estate Planning Checklist
Now these may not mean much to you right now but you would do well to go over each of the forms for estate planning and become familiar with them. Most people are generally looking for simple estate planning information but if you have quite a few “irons in the fire” then either considering the packages or getting in touch with an estate planning attorney would be solid options.
In fact, we recommend contacting an attorney anyway even if you are going to go it alone and just ask some simple questions just to make sure you have your T’s crossed and I’s dotted.
Here’s a checklist of information you will need to provide when submitting your forms. Just be sure to check with a reliable source that the information to be submitted is correct. The following will give you some guide on what is required on estate planning forms.
- Personal and family information which includes children, spouse/s and their children.
- Your personal and Family financial assets which you need to be thorough about including everything of value you want passed onto whomever. This includes cash assets, life insurance, 401(k) and retirement plan assets, pension plans, profit sharing, material assets, business and investment assets and anything else of value such as personal and private items.
- You need to set out a plan and objective on your planning estate forms. For example, how do you want the assets dispersed or allocated and if you become incapable of managing your estate plan who to do you to hand the reigns over to.
- You need to name your guardians, executors or trustees. Take your time here as this is extremely important.
- Finally, anything else you can think of which you weren’t able to add into the various sections of the form. Here are a couple of resources where you can get more information on estate planning forms.
lawyers.findlaw.com/
www.aaepa.com/