Estate Planning FAQ

How do I reduce or eliminate paying Federal Estate Taxes?

If your estate’s net worth is over $3.5 million, the excess is subject to a tax beginning at 45%. If you are married, the death tax can be deferred until your spouse’s death, but must be paid at that time. A properly drafted and funded married couple’s revocable living trust can exempt $7 million in total from Federal estate tax. For larger estates (estates for single persons over $3.5 million and married couples over $7 million), special sophisticated additional trusts can be set up to reduce the tax burden substantially such as irrevocable life insurance trusts and charitable remainder trusts.

How can I avoid the need for a court supervised conservatorship?

If you are incapacitated suddenly or have a degenerative illness such as Alzheimer’s, you may become unable physically and/or mentally to carry on your own affairs. If this happens and you have not planned for it, your loved ones must apply to the court for authorization to act on your behalf. It is time consuming, complicated, requires you to deal with the state and county government bureaucracies and may cause you to incur costly and unnecessary attorney’s fees. The durable power of attorney and advanced health care directive provides your agents with the legal authority necessary to act on your behalf and make almost all necessary financial and medical decisions, and they are made by the person that you appoint, not whom the court appoints.

What is a special needs trust?

If you have a child or loved one with disabilities who is on state or federal benefit programs such as Social Security Disability (SSI) or MediCaid/MediCal, you can not leave them assets directly in your will or living trust because on your death they would no longer be deemed eligible for those benefits because they then have assets. A properly drafted special needs trust allows them to make use of the assets during their lifetime for certain specific purposes without disqualifying them from receiving those government benefits which they clearly need.

Why do I need an Attorney for Estate Planning?

Many well intentioned people are buying software products and doing their own estate planning, or are hiring discount lawyers or using general practice attorneys who bought a software program and then “dabble” in estate planning. The risk you run is that you will not know your estate plan is defective until you are incapacitated or dead and at that point it is too late for you to do anything about it. This is because estate planning is one of the most complex areas of law. In order to create and implement an estate plan, one must have knowledge in multiple areas of law, such as tax, property, probate and family law just to name a few. In addition, the process also requires that one must be able to understand and integrate your personal financial and retirement planning goals and objectives into the process with the ultimate result being a carefully crafted, comprehensive and integrated estate plan. A competent estate planning attorney working with your financial advisor can help you to accomplish all of your goals. San Diego Estate Planning Attorney Steve Bliss has over 17 years of experience doing just that.

What does an Estate Plan cost?

The prices out there run the gambit for estate planning services. You have the big firms with their big reputations charging upwards of $3,000.00 and you have the general practice discount lawyers that buy a computer program and can spit out documents for you for $800.00. Please, however, do not have a paralegal do the estate plan for you. First, it is illegal for a paralegal to work directly with you without being supervised by an attorney. Second, I get more probate cases now from botched trusts done by paralegals and by the general practice discount lawyers than I do from people dying without an estate plan at all. Quite often there are big problems that are caused within families due to the mistakes that are made by paralegals and discount lawyers. For a competent estate planning attorney, his or her fees are based on the complexity of the issues that are involved in the planning of the estate and by such things as how many pieces of real estate the client owns. My pricing for a complete basic package will cost anywhere from $1500 to $2500 absent something unusual. Discounts are available for CLC members and for the general public based upon need and the facts of the individual case.