The goal of preparing estate planning documents is, unsurprisingly, to plan for unpleasant circumstances such as your death and/or incapacity.
Trustees, Executors, Guardians and Healthcare Agents
The following roles can be played by same people or different people including differences between partners. I would generally recommend having the same people for guardians of the children just to avoid issues later but there is no requirement that they be the same between partners.
I will need names and addresses for these people.
Trustee – You and/or your partner will serve as the initial trustees of your trust. The trustees dictate basically everything happens with your assets. When you are the trustee, you can do anything you want. However, when you pass away or become incapacitated, your backup Trustee(s) will take control. Their actions will be dictated by the trust terms. The trustee is the person who will hand out money as directed by the trust.
Executor – The executor is the person named in your will to manage your affairs. The way this is set up the only purpose of the will is to move assets into the trust. I would generally recommend this be the same people as your trustees as the roles are identical.
Guardian – These are the people who will take care of your minor children until they turn 18. The trustee, if different from the guardian, will give your guardians funds to help with the children for their health, education, medical need and support.
If you are divorced or separated from the parent of your child, this person should be the first choice for guardian unless parental rights have been severed or arrangements made.
Healthcare Agent – These are the people who will make your medical decisions for you if you are incapacitated. They will have the final say about your care and will be guided, not controlled by, the choices you make on your advance directive.
How Your Assets are Passed Down to Your Heirs
There are no right or wrong answers here. I will tell you how I set up my trust and give you the reasoning behind it. I set up my trust so my heirs will get the income from my estate starting at age 18. They will not be able to touch or sell the assets at that point but they would get interest, dividends, rental profits, etc to use for their day to day expenses. If you have an extremely large estate with a lot of income, you would probably want to set this at a later age.
I then have the actual assets of my estate go to my heirs in two equal payments at age 25 and age 30. This is basically to pay off student loans at 25 and to buy a house at 30.
I often seen people wanting to parcel out the money up to age 40 for their children/heirs. I personally really recommend against that for two reasons. First, can you image being a 40 year old with a spouse and kids and having to beg for your money? Second, if you have a 5 year old child right now, you are signing up your trustee for a potentially 35 year job. It is not fair to the trustee or the child in my opinion.
Again, you can make whatever choices you want and have as many distributions as you want. I would just ask that you think about the burden you are placing on those you are leaving behind.
What Other Information Do I Need?
The most important thing you will need is the deed to any real property you own along with the legal description of the property. You can find this in your mortgage paperwork. If you cannot find it, I can recommend services which will track it down for you but the first place I would look is your real estate agent and your title company.
You are going to want to have lists of your investment accounts, businesses you own, collections you have and any other important assets. I am going to need to know identifying information such as the bank/brokerage house of the assets and the last four digits of the account number.
If you have pets you want to provide for you in your trust, you need to give me some basic information about the pets, who you want to take care of the pets and how much you want to set aside for this.
