Recent events have shown us that life is very unpredictable. Your world can change in a matter of seconds. While the inevitable cannot be avoided, you can better prepare your family for such an eventuality. Listed below are some things which come to mind. Feel free to add to this list.
1) Term Life Insurance:
A life insurance policy helps your family cope up with the financial issues that arise. Normally your employer will provide you with some life insurance. But it is important for the individual to get additional life insurance outside of employment also. There are various life insurance schemes available. At the very least, you can enroll for term life insurance and keep paying premium annually at least till the kids become independent.
2) Will / Living Trust:
Work on a will which will help your family in legal, financial and property matters.
Also to consider is to create a “living trust” in which you place your assets. When the creator of the trust dies, the assets in the trust are passed to a successor trustee of the creator’s choice without involving probate, the court-directed process of distributing assets and paying debts of the deceased.
3) Share a Google Docs document with important financial accounts information:
Create a Google Docs document (or spreadsheet) listing your various financial accounts. Share the document with your wife. This way she can access the document through her own account later on.
4) Share a Google Docs document containing your important passwords
How you manage your various passwords is upto you. But you should have a mechanism to share it with your wife. A Google Docs offers a good solution since both husband / wife can access the same document with their individual accounts. Passwords can be saved as hints and not the actual passwords. Only the husband/wife will know what those hints mean.
5) Share the location of a financial summary document with your sibling or close relative.
What happens if both husband/wife pass away? In that case no one knows about the various finances of the family. In such a case, maybe it will be helpful to store a financial summary document somewhere in your house and let your sibling or a close relative know about its location. Or just give a copy of the summary document to your sibling to keep.
Very nice article Prashant.
Last year a relative of a family friend passed away at 42. His wife had no idea about any of their financial accounts. Neither was the person insured. Unfortunately his family is dealing with not only his loss but a lot of financial troubles too.
Good timely article Prashant.
Along with your Will/Living Trust, Power of Attorney and Advanced Medical Directive are very important, in case you become incapacitated who can make decisions for you. Without the Power of Attorney and Medical Directive, the state will make decisions on your behalf.
Do you guys know of any good lawyer who takes care of these things? We have Will. But for other things, how much does it cost?
Those who have done? Have they done by themselves of they have hired a lawyer. How long is the process.
We have created the following with the help of a lawyer:
1. Will for self
2. Will for Spouse
3. Family Trust
4. Power of Attorney, for self
5. Power of Attorney, for spouse
6. Health Care Directive for self
7. Health Care Directive for spouse
8. Declaration of personal property
9. Certification of Trust
10. Funding of the Trust.
Many a times a Trust is opened but the Trust is not funded. Your Bank accounts/brokerage accounts/Insurance accounts need to be added to the Trust.
The process takes around 2-3 months as you will have to fill a questionnaire and then sit with the lawyer to go over the guardianship for your kids in-case you and your spouse are no more. Division of the assets, at what age the kids can get the assets and trustees for your trust have to be determined.
Finally the trust has to be certified with the county. Then you can start funding the Trust.
The cost for making all the above documents was $1800.00 You can also make use of the legal plan from work to set up the Living Trust.
Thanks Nilesh for the helpful information. Those who have made a living trust, also please chime in with your feedback. Other folks can contact you for help.
For life insurance, typically 20 year level term is recommended, depending on the age of your youngest child. Coverage offered at work us usually very inadequate. Better if life insurance is not combined as an investment tool.
-Sanjay
Nilesh, Others,
Is there a cheaper/easier option?
Sandip,
It is easy, just need few visits with the lawyer – to understand the process, rough draft and they give you time to review and then final trust document. All the documents mentioned by Nilesh are taken care by one lawyer. The second part is then funding your trust which takes longer and is dependent upon how fast you can finish the task. Regarding cost – some employers do have these as part of benefits. If not time to request employers to include it 🙂
Jaina had a legal plan from her work that let us get the trust done from a laywer. Some observations:
1. I have heard cost from ~800$ to $1800 (nilesh).
2. Lawyers seem to create a ‘scare’ that a legal opinion is a must, otherwise you will make mistakes. I doubt this claim- trusts are standard templates and with through research, i think there is little possiblity of mistakes.
3. When i hear the lawyer on desi radio talking about trusts, it seems that he is reiterating the same point over and over, dramatizing the whole thing. There is very little differentiating, substantial specific material.
4. In our own experience (we do not recommend our lawyer) : The laywer has a template draft, they explain it, ask you to make some standard decisions and you sign a ton of documents. It is up to you to find and ask critical questions and customize your trust.
6. An alternative to lawyer is :
a. Research on the internet and understand the different aspects (nicely summarized by nilesh above, and a very good starting point).
b. Get a few drafts from friends( we will gladly share it, email me) . Compare them and see if you find any diffrence.
c. Try a will-making software
6.It is definitely worth giving DIY a shot. You will learn more then what laywer will ever explain, and save money.
7. Some lawyers can review your trust for much smaller fee. DIY and get it reviewed.
On the topic of insurance, Sanjay/ameeta, why do you opine that LI is not a insurance vehicle? To the contrary, we find, e.g. a whole life policy to be a a very effective investment avenue that offers excellent insurance coverage too.
Sorry i meant sanjay/ameetas suggestions that LI is not a Investment vehicle.
A good resource for making living trust’s online (costing less than 100$) is
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/making-living-trust-yourself-29736.html
I was talking to a friend at work about the need for estate planning and he pointed me to a nice little write up which I thought of sharing
“let’s say you purchase a house for $400k, a car for $25k, have $10k in a checking account, and $100k in a 401k. Then you die.
If you have a will, but no family trust, or no will at all, the estate will go through probate court. This means several things, all of which are bad for your family.
• The lawyers will take 6% of the total value of the estate. This means the sale price of all assets, not your equity stake. So if you only have $100k of equity in your $400k house, you still owe the lawyers 6% of $400k.
• The 401k is the only thing that will not go through probate court, since it has a beneficiary designation. So the total value of the estate going through probate is $435k.
• The attorneys will take a statutory fee of $26,100.
• Let’s say the attorney has to sell the house to pay out the beneficiaries, which often happens. The attorney will charge their hourly rate as extraordinary fees for the time spent selling the house.
• Aside from the cost, the probate records are public, whereas a family trust distribution is kept confidential.
• Let’s also say one of your designated beneficiaries dies prior to the distribution and you didn’t update your will, or you wrote the will in such a way that is unclear. The remaining beneficiaries are free to fight over that share in court. This is where most of the family drama stems from.
• Let’s say your beneficiaries are small children. Small children typically aren’t good at managing thousands of dollars for themselves. Again, a proper estate plan would set up a system to manage the money for them.
• In addition, a probate case can take a year to multiple years to resolve. If you have no trust in place, your assets will be held by the court until the entire matter is resolved. A trust distribution can be finished in a matter of weeks or months at most.”
Also we had a Estate planning seminar at work and I will be more than happy to share the slides to anyone who is interested. Just email me.
Good points Bhanik.
One thing I remember from the seminar, the lawyer said was you have to pay the lawyer to make a Trust or during the Probate. Your Choice.
Kalpendu, the primary purpose is to supplement loss of income in the event of sudden death.
Let’ take an example. Say Raj is 30, married with 2 children aged 3 yr and 1 yr, is the sole bread earner and owns a home. Raj currently earns enough to pay off the mortgage in 18 years, have a decent retirement accumulated by age 52 and have saved up enough to send kids through college.
In this case Raj definitely needs life insurance coverage for 22 yrs. The insurance benefit amount should be such that when invested, it generates atleast the same annual income he was earning. Insurance coverage beyond 22 yrs in this case is more like ‘nice to have’.
Raj will also need disability insurance, in case he is not able to work but is alive.
I have heard that whole life premiums are much higher than term life and generate more in commission for the selling agent.
-Sanjay