Hot Estate Plan Summer
You have never truly been poor if traveling to visit family has been an annual event, and especially not if the family gathers in a tourist destination where none of you live. While it is not as stressful as relentless financial desperation, facing the annual family reunion takes courage once you are an adult. You prepare a list of talking points to discuss so that you can delay your relatives’ racist tirades and uncomfortable personal questions, even if you cannot avoid them entirely. You plan an itinerary of ostensibly helpful chores that will enable you to make yourself scarce during the most unpleasant events. Now that you are a member of the old generation, and everyone else is dreading seeing you as much as you used to dread seeing your elders, you might think that you have nothing left to fear. The inevitability of death is never more obvious than at a family reunion, and you dread your children’s talking point that manifests as a question about your estate plan. Remember what you used to tell your younger self, that you will get through it as long as you remain in control of the narrative. Before you face your family this summer, develop an airtight game plan with a Washington, D.C. estate planning lawyer.
It Starts With a Power Pose in Your Estate Planning Lawyer’s Office
Only you can decide which beneficiaries of your will inherit what, and you even have the right to disinherit some or all of your relatives entirely. You probably know how you want your end-of-life finances and your final bequests to go. Your lawyer just needs to put it in writing. What you need more help with from your lawyer, though, is reassurance that you don’t have to tell everyone everything, and especially not this year. Your strategy session will likely focus on what to say this year and what to save for future conversations.
A Few Sentences Beside the Pool Are All You Need
If you attempt to hold a formal meeting about your estate plan, you will only put everyone on the defensive, including yourself. Instead, have brief conversations about it with individual adult family members when the opportunity arises, on a morning walk with your son, in front of the restaurant with your daughter while your son-in-law is parking the car. You only need to say that you wrote a will, that you bought long-term care insurance, and the name of your estate planning lawyer. Let them ask questions if they want to or change the subject if they want to. Either way, you will have sent the message that you are in control, and they cannot override your decisions.
It Adjourns With a Cash Gift
To drive home the point that you have money and it is no one else’s business how you spend it, give cash gifts to at least some relatives at the end of the family reunion. That is what the annual gift tax exclusion is for.
Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C. About Disclosing Your Estate Plan on Your Own Terms
A Washington, D.C. estate planning attorney can help you summon the courage to talk to your family about your estate plan. Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C. in Washington, D.C. or call 202-362-5900.
Source:
fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/tax-tips#:~:text=The%20annual%20gift%20tax%20exclusion,the%20gift%20being%20considered%20taxable.
