Trust & Estates

Estate Planning In Orange, California: What You Need To Know And Why You Need An Attorney

Estate planning is an ongoing process throughout adulthood where an experienced attorney assists you with putting into action your final financial and healthcare wishes to make sure that they will be honored upon either your death or your incapacitation. Using the legal tools that estate planning offers is the best way to ensure that your minor children, adult children, spouse, pets, and other beloved family members will be taken care of after you have left this world.

California Estate Planning Terms To Know When Communicating With Your Attorney

When you begin to research and learn about the estate planning process in California, you are likely to come across quite a few terms that you were previously unfamiliar with. Before you decide on an Orange, CA trust and estates attorney to contact for discussing your options, it may be helpful to familiarize yourself a bit with the definitions of these common terms:

• Will: A legal document in which a decedent has specified how he or she wants his or her assets distributed after they have died.
• Decedent: The person who has died and left behind their assets to certain beneficiaries.
• Beneficiaries: The loved ones who will be receiving assets from the decedent’s estate, either as named in the person’s will or as determined by the court.
• Estate: The sum of all of a decedent’s assets, including cash, bank accounts, real estate, life insurance policies, retirement accounts, vehicles, and any and all personal belongings.
• Executor: The person who is named in the will to take on certain duties, such as inventorying and cataloguing all the decedent’s assets, paying the estate’s final debts and the final taxes of the estate, filing the necessary lawsuits for any debts owed to the estate, and distributing all the estate’s assets to the beneficiaries as the decedent intended.
• Administrator: The person who has been named by the court to administer an estate when the decedent did not leave a valid will.
• Trust: An estate planning tool where the registered ownership of certain assets is transferred to a trustee, who takes on a fiduciary duty to manage and distribute the assets for the benefit of the named beneficiaries of the trust. Different kinds of trusts can be created and utilized for different purposes, such as to achieve certain tax goals.
• Trustee: The person who will hold title to all the assets in a trust and will manage and distribute those assets according to the terms of the trust. A trustee may be an individual person or maybe a bank or trust company.
• Fiduciary duty: A legal responsibility that is imposed upon a person and requires them to exercise the highest legal levels of integrity when handling the assets that have been entrusted to them.
• Advance Medical Directive: A legal document in which a person names a specific individual to make their medical decisions for them if they become unable to. This document can also express the creator’s wishes concerning life-extending medical care.

The Importance Of Finding An Experienced Trust And Estates Attorney In Orange, CA

The areas of California law that pertain to estate planning are incredibly complicated and vast. In addition, they are very much subject to constant change on a very abrupt basis. Not only do you need to have an Orange, CA trust and estates attorney assist you in making sure that all of your estate planning documents and plans are compliant with the most recent laws, you also need to make sure those documents stay in compliance until the time of your death. Once you identify your wishes and articulate them into a legally valid estate plan, you must continue to work with your Orange, CA trust and estates attorney throughout the remainder of your life. If a law changes which effectively renders all or parts of your estate plan invalid, you need to be able to immediately realize this fact the next time you are scheduled to check in with your trust and estates attorney. Then, you can correct it, rather than leaving your loved ones to realize it after you are gone.

Chris T. Nguyen, Leading Trust And Estates Attorney In Orange, California

Attorney Chris Nguyen of the Law Office of Chris T. Nguyen has over a decade of experience under his belt when it comes to attending to the needs of people who require high-quality legal planning and representation. Attorney Nguyen offers a free initial consultation with absolutely no obligation to anyone who seeks information about how to start the estate planning process. Having a valid estate plan in place is one of the most thoughtful final gifts you can leave behind for your loved ones when your life ends. The Law Office of Chris T. Nguyen can help you make that gift a reality.