Estate Planning
Comprehensive Estate Planning
A simple estate plan can outline the distribution of your assets after death but a comprehensive, well-thought estate plan can help you accomplish so much more. Depending on your specific situation, a comprehensive plan will help you:
- Give specific direction in financial and medical issues
- Help you determine how your assets should be distributed, when, and to whom
- Avoid the Michigan probate process
- Choose a guardian and/or conservator for your minor children.
- Protection from creditors, lawsuits, divorce, remarriage, and other potential problems
- Minimize or even eliminate estate, gift and other taxes.
- Allow you to rest at ease knowing that you and your heirs are protected.
We work closely with you to understand your situation and goals, then employ several estate planning tools and techniques in combination to best accomplish your goals. The following is a brief introduction to some of those tools.
Wills and Trusts
Wills and Trusts are often used together to determine who will administer your estate, how your assets will be distributed, and to help you avoid the necessity of the probate process. There are many types of trusts and your legal advisor can explain what type of trust might be necessary at your present position in life.
Probate Administration and Trust Administration
Probate administration is the process of transferring the assets of an estate to its legal heirs as designated in the Last Will and Testament. Trust administration is a similar to probate except that the court is not involved. We can represent you in the probate and trust administration minimizing costs and time.
Medicaid and Long-Term Care Planning
We have witnessed firsthand how the staggering costs of long-term health care can financially ruin many families as they face outliving their money and assets. Zolton Law can help prevent such losses with our knowledge of Estate Planning, Wills, Trusts, Medicaid Law and Elder care planning.
Elder Law
We frequently visit our clients in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities to look after them on issues of healthcare surrogacy, elder abuse and neglect, estate planning and Medicare planning and even to provide help with IRA’s and retirement accounts.
Powers of Attorney
There are circumstances where it is best to allow others to make decisions regarding your health or finances where a power of attorney is required. A durable power of attorney in Michigan is a law-abiding document that appoints another party the authority to make financial and other legal decisions on your behalf.
