Estate Planning

The Watsonville, California law firm of Allen & Allen LLP prepares individually tailored estate planning documents designed to accomplish the goals of the client, avoid probate administration, and minimize any tax implications.  Our areas of representation include:

Wills, Living Trusts and Related Documents

We prepare estate planning documents including:

• Wills: We prepare simple wills for clients, as well as pour-over wills, which are wills which are designed to work in unison with a living trust. We also prepare wills with guardianship provisions for our clients' minor children.
• Revocable Living Trusts: We prepare living trusts and assist our clients in properly funding their trust in order to avoid the necessity of a probate administration on the death of a client. We also offer trust administration services following the death of a trustor.
• Financial Powers of Attorney: We prepare financial powers of attorney designating a person or persons to manage the financial affairs of our clients in the event they become incapacitated.
• Advance Health Care Directives: We prepare advance health care directives allowing our clients to designate a person or persons to make medical decisions on their behalf and carry out their wishes with regard to health care.

Your personal and financial circumstances may change over time, and the laws that apply to estate planning documents are also changing, therefore we suggest periodically reviewing your estate planning documents to make sure they still express your wishes and comport with changes in the law.  We are frequently asked to review estate planning documents prepared by other lawyers, and can assist you in preparing an amendment to your existing trust or a complete amendment and restatement of a trust as necessary.

Revocable Living Trusts

A living trust is a document which you create during your lifetime which allows you to specify who will manage the assets of the trust (the "successor trustee") and who will receive the assets of the trust (the trust beneficiaries") after your death.  During your lifetime, you are both the trustee and the beneficiary of the trust, ensuring that you still have complete use and control over your assets.  As the name implies, you can revoke the trust or make changes to the provisions of the trust during your lifetime. 

A living trust offers certain advantages over a simple will:

• Probate Avoidance: Upon your death, the assets of a properly funded living trust are distributed to the beneficiaries of your trust, in the manner specified in the trust, without having to pass through probate.  Trusts allow you to avoid the costs and time delay associated with probate administration.
• A Plan in Case of Incapacity: In the event you become incapacitated, your successor trustee will manage the trust assets on your behalf, often avoiding the necessity for a conservatorship.

Tax Planning

In preparing a trust for a client, we carefully access the client's goals and objectives while striving to minimize any potential tax implications.  To that end, we will often use marital trusts designed to utilize the marital deduction for tax-free transfers between spouses, as well as bypass trusts designed to utilize the application exemption amount for estate taxes.  Use of these planning techniques can result in significant estate tax savings for our clients, and for most of our clients will result in zero estate tax liability. 

Seek Experienced Legal Counsel

We welcome the opportunity to serve your estate planning needs.  Contact the estate planning law firm of Allen & Allen by e-mail, or call (831) 768-7215 to schedule a complimentary consultation with an experienced estate planning attorney.