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Estate Planning
Serving Okemos and East Lansing, MI
The attorneys at Klug Law Firm provide quality, comprehensive estate planning services including wills and trusts and business succession planning that addresses the long-term wishes of the client and provides for continuity of the estate in the event of death or incapacity. Klug Law Firm develops an individually tailored estate plan for each client, addressing short-term needs and long-term goals through a variety of mechanisms, including:
- Wills
- Trusts
- Financial durable powers of attorney
- Medical durable powers of attorney (living wills, advance healthcare directives)
- Medicaid Qualified Trusts
- Special Needs Trusts
- Irrevocable Trust with Crummey (Demand) provisions
- Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
- Funding documents
- Business succession planning
Trust Advantages
While the will remains an important and essential component of a comprehensive estate plan, a combination of trusts often provides the most advantages related to tax planning, probate avoidance, and maximizing wealth accumulation within the framework of your estate plan. Our experienced attorneys create the trusts that work best for your particular needs, from revocable living trusts to more complex vehicles, including:
- Crummey Trusts - trusts leveraging the annual gift tax exclusion
- Special Needs Trust - trusts designed to maintain an individual's eligibility for certain government benefits
- Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust - trusts designed to hold ownership of life insurance policies, thereby removing the amount of the death benefit from one's taxable estate
Importance of Funding Documents
Signing your name to the trust is not enough to make it effective. The trust must be properly funded with the assets you wish to have pass in accordance with the terms of the trust. For existing assets, this requires activities such as retitling assets into the trust's name, making an assignment of ownership rights, or naming the trust as a beneficiary. We utilize deeds, certificates of trust existence, assignments and other essential funding documents to ensure your trusts are properly funded. Utilizing the correct documents and procedure is necessary to ensure the intended property is treated as an asset of the trust, avoid probate, and make sure property passes to the intended beneficiary.
Michigan Elder Law Attorneys
In addition to estate planning, Klug Law Firm represents elder clients and their family, conservator or Power of Attorney with Medicaid qualification for coverage of nursing home expenses. Klug Law Firm also including preparing and establishing Medicaid qualified trusts and special needs trusts; determining if an elder client has the "testamentary capacity" to make a will, trust or power of attorney.
Changes in the family dynamics often prompt the need to review and revise the estate plan, and Klug Law Firm continues to meet the legal needs of its clients by providing full-service advice and representation whenever necessary. In Lansing and central Michigan, contact the Klug Law Firm for quality, professional assistance in areas of estate planning or elder law.
