Nashville Estate Planning Lawyer

Nashville Estate Planning Attorney

An estate plan primarily addresses your estate, which includes all your properties, accounts, personal assets, and financial assets. While many consider estate planning to only be necessary for wealthy and elderly individuals, estate planning can benefit anyone who owns any assets and has wishes for those assets after they pass. Creating an estate plan can be easier with the help of a skilled Nashville estate planning lawyer and can protect your estate, your future care, and the well-being of your loved ones.

Experienced Estate Planning Legal Support in Nashville

Your legal support for estate planning should be nuanced and based on years of practical experience. Shanone Emmack, of Emmack Probate and Estate Law Group, has nearly ten years of legal experience, including years of advising and assisting individuals with the creation and updating of their estate plans. She can help you create an estate plan to support your familial and financial interests.

Whether you are certain of your wishes for estate planning or need to determine your goals, attorney Shanone Emmack can help. She can help you customize your plan to address these goals, including the management of your assets, the care and support of your children, the protection of yourself in an emergency, and other goals. The security from a clear estate plan can help you and your family.

There are many benefits to a basic or comprehensive estate plan, but these benefits only exist if the plan is legally valid and enforceable. The right attorney can help with this and help ensure the plan remains enforceable as laws and your wishes change. Shanone Emmack knows the importance of compassionate and personalized care when discussing estate plans and can help you create a strong plan for your future.

Understanding Estate Planning for Your Future

Estate plans can be tailored to your needs, including whatever documents are necessary to address your end-of-life goals. Some documents focus on the legal powers you give to trusted persons in your life, while others designate the distribution of your assets. While estate plans can include many different documents, some of the most common estate planning tools include:

1. Last will and testament
2. Living wills and medical directives
3. Powers of attorney
4. Revocable and irrevocable trusts
5. Conservatorships
6. Beneficiary designations

A basic estate plan includes a last will and testament at a minimum, which can help speed up the probate process. Probate is the method the state uses to administer an estate after death. A more complex and comprehensive estate plan can avoid the probate process entirely. While estate planning can feel like a hassle for many people, it is crucial to have your affairs in order.

What Is the Purpose of Making an Estate Plan?

Making an estate plan is multi-purposed, providing protection in numerous ways for yourself, your loved ones, your estate, and the distribution of your estate. You are able to clearly state your wishes in an estate plan. As long as the estate plan is enforceable, this ensures that you know how your affairs and assets will be handled when you are unable to. While an estate plan applies after your death, elements of it can also provide guidance if you become incapacitated by accident or illness.

There are many other benefits to creating a comprehensive estate plan, including:

• Keeping your estate out of probate entirely, allowing your assets to transfer immediately to your beneficiaries saving time, stress, and money
• Making the process of probate faster, less stressful, and less expensive for your loved ones
• Designating a guardian and method of financial support for your minor children
• Providing financial support and specific assets to your family members
• Planning for the care and support of a disabled and/or minor loved one
• Organizing relevant asset and debt information and documents in one place
• Protecting your assets and their value during your life and after death
• Ensuring you receive the medical care you wish if you are unable to make those decisions
• Minimizing tax consequences when transferring certain assets
• Enabling a trusted individual to make important legal, medical, or financial choices for you when you cannot
• Minimizing the likelihood of familial disputes and contests during probate
• Ensuring that the causes and organizations you support can benefit from your estate
• Creating business succession and continuity for business owners

There are many other benefits from creating a comprehensive estate plan, customized to your unique assets, family needs, and wishes.

Understanding a Will

A will is a basic document in an estate plan. It lists the following:

1. Your assets and debts
2. The management and executor of the estate
3. The beneficiaries of your assets and estate
4. Your minor children’s designated guardian

This basic information is crucial to making your wishes clear, and it helps your estate avoid Tennessee’s succession laws. Your will states your intentions for your estate and can be modified at any point during your life as long as you have the capacity to do so. Creating a will can give you certainty about how your family will be supported after your death and that your assets will be managed how you intend.

If you die without a will in place, your estate will be managed and distributed by intestate succession laws and be managed by a person appointed by the court. You may not intend your estate to be distributed this way. An enforceable will prevents this from happening.

While a will is beneficial, it still allows your estate to pass through probate. This is not ideal for many individuals creating an estate plan, as the probate process can be lengthy and expensive. In order to keep an estate out of probate court, you must have a more comprehensive estate plan.

Establishing a Trust

A trust is an independent legal entity that can hold the assets in your estate and designate beneficiaries for those assets. This is similar to a will, but a will is a public document. The assets in a trust do not have to enter probate, and beneficiaries can receive assets immediately rather than being required to wait until the probate court has concluded.

You also have more control over when and how the assets in a trust are distributed. A trust can hold assets until a minor beneficiary turns 18 or can hold assets for a beneficiary who receives government benefits so they do not lose those needed benefits. There are irrevocable and revocable trusts and many different uses for these trusts. Your estate plan can include one or multiple trusts. A trust is managed and distributed by a trustee.

Creating Powers of Attorney

Powers of attorney is a document that allows someone to make important decisions on your behalf. In an estate plan, they are used to give a trusted individual these powers when you are incapacitated and unable to make those decisions yourself. This person will be taking care of your affairs when you cannot, so it is important that they are a professional or loved one that you trust.

A healthcare power of attorney and a financial power of attorney are two of the most common forms, but a power of attorney document could give whatever legal or financial powers you wish to provide.

Establishing a Conservatorship

A conservatorship, like powers of attorney, enables a trusted person to make decisions for someone else. However, the court creates a conservatorship to provide legal care for someone who is deemed incapacitated. This may be temporary or permanent. A conservatorship is often created without the consent of the individual who is under its care because of this. This arrangement can be necessary if a loved one is incapable of making their own decisions and has not established powers of attorney.

Creating a Living Will

A living will, or an advance directive for healthcare, provides for your own care if you become incapacitated. An advance directive explains your wishes for medical treatment, pain management, life support care, and other preferences. Medical professionals and your healthcare power of attorney use these directives if you are incapacitated to make informed decisions about your care.

How Does an Attorney Benefit My Estate Plan?

When you work with an Nashville attorney to draft, review, or update your estate plan, you are lowering the chances of your estate plan being unenforceable, invalid, or easily contested. While it may seem less expensive to create a will or estate plan without an attorney, it is typically more expensive and frustrating for your loved ones in the long term.

Without an attorney, an estate plan is more likely to be invalid, so your wishes will not be followed, and your loved ones must start the process of administering your estate again. Lengthening the process of probate increases the costs. It can also lead to more disputes between family members over what your intentions were for your estate. The most effective way to protect your family from potential conflict is to make sure your plan is straightforward and enforceable with your attorney in Tennessee.

Tailored Legal Care for Straightforward Estate Planning

It may be difficult to know where to begin to draft an estate plan. Finding the right legal professional can help you begin this process and address your unique needs. Emmack Probate and Estate Law Group can help you create a clear, personalized, and complete estate plan.

An effective estate plan can provide you comfort, and protect your loved ones well into the future. Drafting and continually updating your estate plan with the help of Shanone Emmack and her team provides you with an enforceable and specific estate plan. Contact the firm today.