Wills, Trusts & Estates: Plain and Simple – Estate Planning In The Time Of Coronavirus

May 20, 2020

This is a surrealistic time for most of us, but we will come out on the “other side” and we still need to plan for the future. We should continue to take at least basic steps to plan our estates, like preparing wills and/or revocable trusts to protect our families for the future, as well as powers of attorney, living wills and health care proxies.

If you already have a revocable trust in place that is unfunded, you may wish to consider at least partially funding that trust with assets that you hold in your own name (i.e., those that are not held jointly with right of survivorship or otherwise do not have a beneficiary designation). I suggest this because many New York courts are not accepting wills for probate during this crisis, which means that your family may not be able to access assets that are held in your own name for quite some time. Once the courts do “open up,” there is sure to be a large back log in wills that need to be probated, which could cause a delay of months.

In addition, while not the first thing on anyone’s mind nowadays, the decline in the value of assets during this time presents an opportunity for more sophisticated estate planning, as well.

Reprinted with permission from Lloyd Harbor Life, May 2020. 

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