Use The Power of Estate Planning To Build Your Practice
Submitted by American Endowment Foundation on October 4th, 2021
By Eric Kinaitis, Editor
How many of your clients have a formal written estate plan? If you don’t know that answer, then you may have discovered an opportunity to expand the level of guidance and value that you can offer your clientele.
Estate planning may be an uncomfortable topic for many; no one likes thinking about our ultimate end. As a financial planner or advisor, being able to embrace this difficult topic may prove to be a niche that can set your practice apart and provide a valuable and holistic service to your clientele.
With October being Estate & Gift Planning Awareness Month, this may provide an excellent avenue into broaching this topic with your clients if you haven’t before.
The following steps can provide you and your clients a good starting point:
Goals:
- What do they want to happen when they die?
- How will their assets get distributed? Family, friends, charity, etc.?
- Who will actually handle the estate?
- What concerns do they have about privacy or family harmony as it relates to their estate and the distribution of their assets?
- What is the financial value of the estate? Will it be affected by estate taxes?
Gather & Organize the Financial Data:
- Have they gathered all relevant documents?
- Have they determined their net worth?
- Have they reviewed their beneficiary designations? This point is extremely important and often overlooked. Beneficiary designations take precedence over instructions within a will.
- How is title held to property?
Analysis & Discussion:
- Is there a flowchart of their existing estate plan?
Estate Strategy:
- Have all relevant strategies been reviewed? Which one is best?
- Building the estate plan.
Implementing the Estate Plan:
- Draft, review, edit and sign estate planning documents.
- Coordinate title to the properties and beneficiary selections with the estate plan.
- Where are the estate documents located? Does the person who is going to handle the estate know where these documents are located?
Tracking & Monitoring Progress of the Estate Plan:
- Is there a specific date on the calendar when you and your client will review their estate plan each year? Is your client aware that their estate plan should be reviewed any time their family situation changes (birth, death, divorce, etc.?)
In cooperation with The Financial Awareness Foundation, we are pleased to offer their authoritative and comprehensive resource guide Your Estate & Gift Planning Organizer. This guide provides step-by-step advice on organizing & implementing an estate & gifting plan as well numerous forms to organize the process. Working together through this guide, you and your client will be able to organize a difficult task into a manageable one.
Contact or call us at 1-888-660-4508 and let us discuss how AEF, charitable planning, and donor advised funds can play a role in the estate planning process. We look forward to discussing your needs and interests in greater detail.