Why Have An Estate Plan?

Failing to plan your estate limits your ability to accomplish many of your most important goals. More importantly, failing to create an estate plan means you have already made a decision--A decision to allow the state of Maryland to make decisions for you--including who gets your assets and how much they will get!

After working with hundreds of individuals and families, we know that once you start to consider your estate plan, you will realize how it impacts every part of the life you have built.

There are many more reasons to take the initiative and create an estate plan. Here are just some:

• Have a business or an interest in a business?
• Want to ensure that your home or farm remains in the family?
• Desire to provide for your children or grandchildren to attend college?
• Want to ensure that your life insurance proceeds aren't depleted in probate?
• Have a vacation home in another state?
• Have children from prior marriages?
• Want to recognize a Charity or special person in your life?

In meeting with hundreds of clients over the years, we have never met anyone who said they wanted their loved ones lives to be more difficult if they weren't around. And yet, many people fail to take the simple steps to protect their family from such difficult circumstances.

Very few of us build wealth for the sake of accumulation. Instead, most of us build wealth so that we can use it to benefit the people and causes that are meaningful to us. Unfortunately, failing to adopt an estate plan may mean that outside forces, including federal and state taxing authorities, undermine the goals of the people we cherish.

Sometimes this can mean liquidating assets to pay taxes; other times it means moving from the family home or farm; and sometimes it simply means that our reduced assets do not adequately support the needs of our loved ones. The result can be that we leave our families to face difficult choices when we can't be there to help.

Don't delay. Get started on your estate plan today or by contacting us to schedule an appointment.