Estate plan for single parent

By Mei Ling Lin

As a single parent, have you think about an estate plan for yourself and your children? Many of you might think, “Why do I need to have estate plan? I only have little saving in the bank account and low monthly salary can spend on my children and myself, or my children are still young, I will plan it for them later. ”

However, to have estate plan is a good idea to protect your and your children’s future lives, when some unexpected things happen to you. Because if without the estate plan, and you don’t have any former spouse or your spouse dead, then when you unexpected pass away, there is nobody could help you to take care of your children.

In addition, estate plan can help you to ensure that your estate would transfer to your children and they can have money to support their future live if you pass away. It is not difficult to start your estate planning even you just have little amount of saving or low salary.

There are some steps guide can help you to make your first estate plan. The first step is to ensure your current custody and guardianship agreements and all associated court orders of all children are filed with a governing body. Then second step is you need to decide who will care for your children in the event of your death.

Third step is you need to assess your assets and decide who will get what, and also, you need to plan for your estate’s financial needs. Fourth step is you need to take steps to ensure your children’s economic standard of life is affected as little as possible. In addition, you need to start a rainy-day fund to increase your wealth. Last step is you need to meet with legal counsel to establish a plan and file documents and keep a back-up somewhere safe.

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Estate planning requires a plan

Post by YiLin Zhu
By Paul Brent on Feb 04 2009

If you need the perfect conversation stopper to escape the kitchen corner you find yourself in at that next party, you might try raising the topic of estate planning. It's one of those terms, like "root canal," that sound worse than the inevitable reality.

Estate planning sounds stuffy, boring and tedious. One financial writer said it could easily be sexed up by calling it "intergenerational wealth transfer" or something to that effect. With about $1 trillion sloshing around the economy and waiting to move from Canada's eldest generation, you would think the marketing wizards in the financial industry would have addressed this by now.

In truth, estate planning is in need of a makeover because it's a concern for anyone who has assets, not just the well heeled. What makes estate planning so daunting, however, is the quick realization that you likely need a team of people involved in managing your estate: financial advisers, accountants, lawyers and executors.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the country's big financial institutions have stepped in and are offering the closest thing to one-stop shopping. "You can go to any one of the banks," said Elaine Blades, manager of trust products and services at Scotiatrust in Toronto. The trust arm of the Bank of Nova Scotia runs a private client group as a unit of its wealth management services "where we can offer will and estate planning. We have financial planners and different types of investment expertise."

For those who don't want to put their estate planning needs all under one roof, Blades said people should consider a fee-for-service financial planner who doesn't recommend particular services, but rather attempts to draw up an objective plan and then works with an accountant, lawyer and other professionals, such as insurance experts, as needed to implement your estate plan.

Identifying and creating a team of professionals to shape and steer things is the first step in estate planning. The process also includes creating a balance sheet, or estate fiscal map, that shows where your assets and liabilities are hiding; assessing life insurance needs for you and your spouse; appointing a power of attorney; drawing up a will; and having a tax specialist ensure the estate's assets are going to be disbursed in the most tax-efficient way possible.
It looks like a daunting list and that is why firms such as Royal Bank of Canada state "people put off making an estate plan because they think it's going to be too difficult and time-consuming." The firm advises that people first tally up their assets and liabilities to get a rough estimate of their net worth, gather key papers and documents along the way, and then think about the goals and objectives of their estate plan.

Think of that as the fun part of the exercise. This should include deciding upon beneficiaries, how your assets will be divided. and what will happen to big assets such as a vacation home or family business.

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Time to Tweak Your Estate Plan

By Dan Hughes

Article by Bill Bischoff

That said, you need to be careful. This leap in the exemption could throw your estate plan out of whack. Without a careful review of your arrangements, part of your estate could be allocated in ways you didn't intend.

But before I go any further, let me just make a plea to all of you who took a look at that $3.5 billion figure and decided this article definitely does not apply to you. Sure, $3.5 million sounds like an awful lot of money. But you might be wealthier than you think. For federal estate-tax purposes, your estate includes your home, cars, retirement accounts, taxable investment accounts, collectibles, and so forth.

Perhaps more important, it also includes any death benefits from personal life-insurance policies you own, including those on your own life. (If you have the power to change beneficiaries or coverage amounts, you own the policy.) With life-insurance coverage thrown into the mix, the odds are much higher that your estate exceeds the seemingly generous $2.5 million exemption. So if you don't already have an estate-tax saving strategy in place, now may be the time to create one. For assistance in getting started, see our estate planning section.

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