Estate Planning for Retirement

Estate Planning for Retirement in Orland Park, Illinois

Serving Families and Individuals throughout Orland Park, Illinois and the Surrounding Areas

You have arrived. Retirement is a time to sit back and relax, enjoy the legacy that you’ve worked for years to build. Further, retirement is a pivotal time in your life to start planning for incapacity and long-term care. This is often an exciting, yet bittersweet time of life.

As when you were nearing retirement, this would be a good time to create an estate plan. After all, you likely have witnessed what can happen when families are not up-to-code with their estate planning.

Unless you legally appoint the decision-maker of your own selection in advance through proper estate planning, then a probate judge will select one for you. While the judge will likely appoint your spouse, the probate court process to accomplish this is expensive, discloses your private personal and financial information to the public record and is a real hassle for your spouse.

Did you know that in the absence of proper estate planning, your assets may be distributed after death based on “one-size-fits-all” state laws written for people who do not have their own estate plan? Of course, this impersonal estate plan written by state lawmakers may not reflect your own unique circumstances and objectives for your spouse and assets.

When it comes to your children and grandchildren, great care should be given to protect any inheritance both for them and from them. For starters, wealth representing a lifetime of your hard work and thrift can be squandered in very short order. Dollars earned just spend differently than dollars inherited. In addition to good, old-fashioned squandering, an inheritance can quickly vanish through divorces, lawsuits and bankruptcies.

Fortunately, with proper (and very careful) estate planning, you can provide an inheritance that is protected for and even from your own children and grandchildren. 

Fortunately, we can help you avoid probate and replace that impersonal, state-written, one-size-fits-all estate plan with one we design together for your unique circumstances and objectives.

We even help you coordinate the beneficiary designations on your life insurance and retirement plans with your estate plan to avoid unpleasant, unintended consequences. For example, all beneficiary designations for your retirement plans need to be revisited, especially due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down on June 12, 2014, (See Clark, et ux v. Rameker).

The Clark case sent shock waves through the estate planning community after a unanimous court ruled that inherited IRAs are not “retirement funds” within the meaning of federal bankruptcy law. According, if your children or grandchildren are “direct” designated beneficiaries of your IRA, then the distributions may be subject to their divorces, lawsuits and bankruptcies. Careful planning is required to protect these important assets, while at the same time preserving the ability to stretch distributions as long as possible for your beneficiaries.

This is not a do-it-yourself project. Call our office today to discuss your retirement planning needs.

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