Estate Planning Services
Plan your estate so your life saving goes to your loved ones according to your wishes. Without an estate plan, your estate will be distributed by the courts according to the laws of California. This may or may not be to your liking.
Each of the estate planning documents has a specific purpose.
Last Will and Testament: A Will, sometimes called a “last will and testament,” states your last wishes.
Besides specifying the distribution of your estate, you can also use the Will to:
Name an executor. An executor is responsible for handling the wishes in a Will.
Name guardians for your children
Provide for pets
Serve as a backup to a living trust.
Revocable Trust A trust is an agreement for holding property in trust for beneficiaries.
Trusts can be revocable or irrevocable. At Everest Legal Docs, we focus on revocable trusts. Revocable trusts, as the name implies, can be revoked or amended by the creator of the trust.
The creator of the trust, called the settlor, can revoke, amend or restate a revocable trust while the settlor is alive. In a revocable trust, a settlor is also the grantor and the trustee: grantor because the settlor grants the property to be held in trust, and trustee because the settlor also has the responsibility of managing the trust.
After the settlor passes away, the successor trustee also referred to as trustee, is responsible for managing the trust.
Your successor trustee has a fiduciary duty. Fiduciary duty is a high level of duty requiring a trustee to be loyal and faithful to the beneficiaries and to the trust.
There are many benefits of leaving your estate in a Trust. Here we list a few:
A trust generally does not require probate.
A trust is very flexible. You can have co-trustees and contingent trustees. Similarly, you can have very flexible distributions with multiple beneficiaries and many arrangements on how the beneficiaries get their inheritance. ·
A trust is an “umbrella” document. You can put different types of assets under this one document and distribute them with one set of instructions. ·
A trust can be amended and restated, so a trust can change as your needs change.
A trust can be revoked. You are not tied to your revocable trust for life.
Certification of Trust This document is a summarizes the trust with information required by financial institutions.
Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Management This document authorizes your financial power of attorney to act on financial matters on your behalf while you are still alive. This power continues even when you become incapacitated. This is a useful part of your estate plan, for instance, if you become incapacitated and you have assets that are not yet moved to the Trust, your power of attorney can move the asset to your Trust.
California Advance Healthcare Directive California Advance Healthcare Directive includes Power of Attorney for HealthCare and the Healthcare Directive, also known as Living Will. Part 1 of the document gives the Power of Attorney to your agents to make healthcare decisions for you. The other part of the document is the Healthcare Directive, which tells your agent what choices to make.
Deeds
Quitclaim Deed
We prepare Quitclaim Deeds which transfers your real property from you as individual to you as trustee of your trust. This transfer puts your property in the trust.
We also provide Quitclaim Deeds for gifting purposes. Just ask us.