When Should You Start Your Estate Plan?
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The best time to start estate planning is while you have legal capacity to do so.
If you wait until you are seriously ill, or suffering from other disabilities, it could affect your legal capacity, and your plan will be effectively challenged by those who assert that you lacked legal capacity, or were subjected to fraud, coercion or undue influence. All of these are requisites for the invalidation of a will or estate plan.
What is the purpose of estate planning?
The purpose of estate planning is to avoid dying intestate.
Dying intestate means dying without a will or a trust. It exposes your property to hazards, making it difficult for your heirs to claim. These hazards come in the guise of probate, creditors, con-artists, lawsuits, judgments, lawyers, and death taxes and can damage much or most of the value of your estate.
Without a will or a trust, the inheritance laws of your state will determine how your property will pass to your heirs. If you have no heirs that fit the state’s formula, the assets will be taken by the state.
Often times the state’s formula and rules for moving assets to your heirs will not be what you would have chosen if you had done some planning.
Therefore, there is no better time to start an estate plan than now.
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