Estate Planning

Estate Planning

A will is a legal document that communicates your wishes about how to manage and distribute your property after your death. Most people make a will the primary way of distributing their assets. A will determines who inherits your property, the terms of the inheritance, and identifies an executor to supervise the terms of the will as it goes through probate.

Trusts are created in order to avoid probate administration and provide for special circumstances. A trust is a legal relationship protected by the courts in which one person, the trustee, holds a property interest for the benefit of another person. There are many uses for trusts, such as protecting assets from creditors, simplifying asset distribution and preventing beneficiaries from misusing assets. Trusts also enable you to keep the asset distributions private, since there is no public record of the transactions.