It’s women’s history month!
Estate planning safeguards women – single women, married women, widowed women, divorced women, mothers, women who do not have children, trans women – ALL WOMEN. Rich women, poor women, all women!
How Estate Planning Protects Women
Incapacity Planning: Who would be in charge of your assets if you could not manage them yourself due to cognitive loss? The movie We Care A Lot is a painful example and reminder that even without a lack of capacity, women are vulnerable to bad actors. Even women with wonderful caring families have fallen victim to these predators. The New Yorker (my favorite magazine) did a terrific article on this issue in 2017.
Inheritance: Are you sure that you, as a married or partnered woman, will have control of your inheritance from your spouse/partner when they die? Many women “of a certain age” rely on their husbands/partners to take care of the finances. Many have been told, “It’s all taken care of – it’s in the trust,” or think that because they signed documents 15 or even 30 years ago, everything is in order. Estate planning is not a “one and done.” Everyone should have a life-long relationship with their estate planning attorney.
Meeting with an estate planning attorney every three years for a review of all assets, ensuring the assets have been transferred to the trust to allow the surviving spouse (statistically a woman) to confirm that she has the tax planning and asset protection planning she needs to make good decisions. So that when the time comes, the estate plan maintains her privacy by staying out of probate court. A failure to have an up-to-date plan can mean protracted court oversight of assets with unnecessary and expensive petitions to the court. Thus, opening her up to exposure to public awareness of her assets, leaving her vulnerable to predators.