This article provides easy-to-understand advice on estate planning, emphasizing the importance of designating beneficiaries for retirement accounts. It highlights the potential complications and costs associated with probate if beneficiaries are not named.
Like it or not, you'll be dead someday. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,Without a plan for where your money and belongings will go, it can take your grieving loved ones months or years to figure out who gets what. Your assets may also end up in the hands of the state if you don't plan ahead. Thinking about estate planning , or where your assets will go after you pass away, may bring up thoughts of complex legal processes and endless mountains of paperwork.
But it doesn't have to be daunting, financial planners say. 'No one really wakes up on a Saturday morning thinking, 'Let's plan for when I die,'' says Ashton Lawrence, a certified financial planner at in South Carolina. But if you think of it as more about making sure your assets, wishes and loved ones are protected, it makes it more palatable, Lawrence says.1. Name or update your beneficiaries in your retirement accounts 'The simplest estate planning step is designating your desired beneficiaries on your retirement accounts,' says Austin Marrs, a CFP and senior wealth advisor at TSA Wealth Management in Houston, Texas. When you open a retirement savings account, such as a 401(k) or individual retirement account, you generally have the option to name a beneficiary, or the person who will receive the value of your holdings in the event of your death. Typically, the process of naming or updating your beneficiary is easy. So easy, you may have ignored it when you signed up or failed to revisit your list to make sure the right people are on it.The Watchman GroupIf you don't designate a beneficiary for your retirement savings account, the courts get involved in a process known as probate, Herzog says. Probate is used to determine account ownership and who is entitled to receive the funds, and 'can be a costly and time-consuming process,' he say
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