Jordan S. Simon

An estate plan, including a last will and testament, protects your family and finances after you die. Your first step in estate planning is to write a comprehensive will that moves smoothly through the probate process.Make sure you're aware of current estate taxes that may influence your planning and how insurance factors into your estate plan.

Probate is the method by which your estate is legally transferred after you die. When estate planning and writing your last will and testament, keep these tips in mind to help the probate process run smoothly. You can be both specific and general in your last will and testament — it's up to you. You can parcel out individual items to people by name and also let your beneficiaries decide how to divide up your worldly goods.

A trust agreement is a document that spells out the rules that you want to be followed for property held in trust for your beneficiaries. Common objectives for trusts are to reduce the estate tax liability, protect property in your estate, and avoid probate. Think of a trust as a special place in which ordinary property from your estate goes in and, as the result of some type of transformation that occurs, takes on a sort of new identity and often is bestowed with superpowers: immunity from estate taxes, resistance to probate, and so on.

Estate planning often involves setting up a revocable trust or irrevocable trust. Each one of those trusts begins with an intervivos trust — a trust you set up that goes into effect while you're still alive. You then decide if the intervivos trust is revocable, meaning that you can change your mind, or irrevocable, meaning sorry, what's done is done.

Most marriage-oriented trusts postpone payment of estate taxes until both spouses in a marriage have died. A marital deduction trust allows you to put property in trust with your spouse as the beneficiary. Upon your death, your spouse has the right to use the property in the trust. No matter how valuable the property in the trust is even if it exceeds that year’s federal estate tax exemption amount, your spouse won’t owe any federal estate taxes.

Trusts can be a great help in your estate planning — they can protect your property, save on estate taxes, and help you avoid probate. Sounds great, right? Well, before seriously considering a trust, you need to understand the basics of trusts and make a well-informed decision about setting up trusts right for you.

Insurance is vital for estate planning: It helps protect your current property, things you hope to attain in the future, and the gifts you hope to leave behind. Take a look at how insurance affects your estate and what types of insurance to consider for your estate planning: Life insurance is a critical part of your estate planning, so make sure that when you purchase a new policy or change an existing one, you look at the rest of your estate planning to get the most benefit from your life insurance.

Even the most orderly estate plans can fall victim to some unforeseen event. To put together a thorough estate plan, take a look at situations that may occur and find out the necessary information for dealing with them. If you're in the process of getting a divorce, you have a lot on your mind. But you also need to look at how your divorce will affect your estate planning.

Depending on the value of your estate, you may not have to deal with at least some of the federal taxes, but you or your surviving beneficiaries may have a substantial amount of tax-related paperwork to file. When estate planning, use these tips to understand what you're dealing with from a tax standpoint: Most people don't have to pay the federal estate tax — the so-called "death tax" —because their estates fall below the federal threshold.