3 Things Often Forgotten in an Estate Plan

April 15, 2022

The perfect estate plan protects your hard work and your family from headaches after you’re gone. We cherish the opportunity to help clients sort through their estate and come up with a plan that’s thorough and makes sure everyone is considered at the end of the day. But, a lot of plans aren’t comprehensive and miss out on some key details that are necessary to include.

Today, we want to mention some of those common misses to make sure you don’t leave anything up to chance.

Family pets

Estate plans often include guardianship and other guidance for what happens with minor children, but many plans fail to consider the “furbabies” of the family. Your dogs, cats, birds, and other household pets should be included. This includes estate plans for young families because you never know when the worst can happen.

You love and care for your pets while you’re here, and, sadly, we often outlast our pets. But whenever a pet outlasts us, we have to consider their needs after we’re gone. If you have a family member who often takes care of them or frequently provides for them, you should consider leaving your pet in their care after you’re gone. If you end up outlasting a pet, it won’t hurt to have them in your plan but you can also remove them whenever you need.

Digital assets

We’ve talked about digital assets before because we know a lot of people forget their digital world when it comes to estate planning. This is becoming an imperative part of estate planning as more people get involved in the stock market, NFTs, cryptocurrency, and other digital assets.

Whatever you possess online will also need to be distributed or sold after you pass away, so you will need to lay out the plans in your estate. You should also consider who will take over your social media accounts (which likely means the person responsible for deactivating or deleting them). We all now have a digital footprint whether we like it or not, so it’s important to modernize your estate plan to reflect this.

Alternative beneficiaries and executors

Any estate plan will detail who is carrying out your wishes and who will benefit from those wishes, but it’s important to make plans for the event someone is either unavailable or passes away before your wishes are complete. While it can create unnecessary headaches to name co-executors to your estate, you can always name a backup executor should the main one not be available. The same applies to your beneficiaries. Whether it’s through legal or health issues, you should be sure to have a direction for your assets should a beneficiary no longer be in a position to receive them.

The ultimate goal of an estate plan is to fulfill your wishes after you’re gone. When you’re not around you won’t be able to provide backups, so it’s important to detail those now rather than later.

At the end of the day, your attorney should be in charge of making sure your estate plan is comprehensive and includes these and other commonly-missed details. At Schlegel Livingston, LLC, our priority is helping you through life’s most important moments. Our experience and expertise will ensure the right estate plan for your situation. Contact us today!