Re-evaluate your estate plan

By Jennifer Ng

Reevaluating your estate plan is crucial and necessary in order to not have your property and money ending up in the wrong hands in the future. It is said that you should update your estate plan when major changes happen in your life, such as financial changes, additional children, marriage/remarriage, and moving. Throughout everyone’s lives there will be changes that can significantly affect their estate plan; so it is important one revise their estate plan to make sure their wealth be distributed to the people they want. The estate tax is going to stay and cannot be taken away. Of course this is no big issue for those who have less than $3.5 million for that is the minimum a person can die owning before they are subject to the tax. But those who are/were to pay the estate tax lost a good amount of their wealth. This also meant their inheritors lost a good amount of wealth due to the estate tax. These factors cause problems in today’s estate plans that may not have been problems when first drafted. What caused these problems was that whoever drew up the estate tax did not prepare for the changes in economy.

Sources:
http://www.finweb.com/financial-planning/keep-your-estate-plan-up-to-date.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/your-money/estate-planning/21wealth.html
http://www.alllaw.com/articles/wills_and_trusts/article1.asp