focus areas

A well managed estate will provide the means by which a person may preserve and maintain the benefits of their assets during their lifetime and minimize the delay, taxes, and administrative costs upon the passing of the assets to the person's relatives, friends, or other designated beneficiaries.

 

Estate planning should always begin with a careful consideration of the client's estate. For estate planning purposes, a client's ''estate'' may be regarded as all of the property that the client owns or in which the client has an interest. This definition is broad enough to include all kinds of property, tangible and intangible, real and personal, community, quasi-community, and separate. It includes assets to which the client holds legal title as well as assets in which the client holds only an equitable interest. It includes such obvious items as real estate, automobiles, stocks and bonds, cash on deposit at banks, furniture and furnishings, jewelry, and works of art, as well as less obvious items, such as interests in life insurance policies and the right to receive payments from retirement or pension plans. The client's estate will include items that the client owns outright, as well as items held by trusts in which the client is either an income or a remainder beneficiary.