Everyone is worried about what their family is going to do after their demise. Well, what happens in the case where there is no family or children? Do they need an estate planning attorney PG County? If you’re considering estate planning and you don’t have any kids to declare as heirs, then here’s what you can do.

Always Discuss Things First

Whether you have kids or not, it’s important to not jump straight into the process of estate planning without consulting a lawyer about it first. There are a lot of things that you don’t know as an asset owner and things can be different if you don’t have any children either, because let’s be real, the main goal of even starting the estate planning process is the fact that you have a family and they need to be able to sustain and live life after your death. But what do you do if you don’t have children?

Well, firstly, you need to get a good lawyer because they will know everything about different cases and scenarios and they will give you a guide to follow and things to do. So, if you’re thinking about starting an estate plan, then you better start hunting for a lawyer, because it might take a while until you find the perfect one.

You Can Opt For Charity

If you don’t have any children to declare as heirs or beneficiaries of your assets, then you can certainly opt for charity. It’s a really good idea to leave the world with peace of mind and you really can’t go wrong with giving your assets to charity, if both you and your spouse are on the same page.

You want to leave something behind for your spouse too, but the rest of it can go to charity and your lawyer can draft up all of the important and mundane paperwork so that you don’t need to move a muscle.

You May or May Not Make A Will

Making a will or not is completely up to you and if you don’t have any children to leave your assets to, then there’s generally no need for you to draft up a will. However, that’s not always smart.

If you’re going to give your assets to someone in the family or even to charity, then you will need a will for that. The will needs to have proper instructions as to how you want things to go who the executor will be and how the assets will be divided among whoever you decide to be the beneficiary after your death.

There Will Still Be Beneficiaries

Children or not, you’re still going to have to come up with beneficiaries, because leaving your assets behind with no will or instructions is like leaving a pot of honey out in the open for the bees to swarm on.

The assets will be wrongfully used if you don’t do something about it, so it’s better to name someone or multiple people as beneficiaries because that means when the estate process is taken to court after your death, the beneficiaries can get their due share of assets as mentioned by you in your will. They can be anyone. From someone in your family like siblings, parents (if they’re still alive), someone from your spouse’s family, or even a charity that you love.

Consider Your Friends

Speaking of who to declare as beneficiaries, sometimes, people with no children can leave their assets behind to their friends who were always there for them during their lives. There will come a time when you come across people who are true friends and they help you in many ways, so it’s a good gesture to declare them as beneficiaries of your assets in your will.

Make sure that you are keeping them in the loop about this thing because it’s a serious matter and you don’t want them to think of it as a prank.

Open A Trust

If you don’t want to give your assets away to any person and not give them whole, then you can make a trust with certain conditions. The trust can be for the charity or any other beneficiary in the family and they can have access to a certain amount of money after a certain amount of time, and you can mention that in the conditions when making the trust. You will need an estate planning lawyer Bowie to do the arrangements correctly.

Get Your Health Care Directives In Order

You want to keep the worst-case scenarios in mind when planning for an estate process. You want to get done with the health and medical care directives too, because there might be a time when you’re unable to make decisions with a sane mind, due to an illness or ailment and you need to have someone to have your back during this time.

So, make all of the decisions that require your attention while you’re still healthy and get over this important task as well. You won’t regret it in the future.

Ensure Proper Decision Making

Even if you don’t have children, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to give the steering wheel to someone else. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer pressure you’re under when planning an estate, but you need to hold your ground.

You need to remind yourself that this is your money and you’re in charge of it, from the get-go and it’s unfair to make decisions, influenced by someone else. So, be smart and level-headed and do exactly what you want to do or what your lawyer advises you to do because they’re more reliable than people who are out for your money.

There Will Still Be Executors

If you thought that the process of estate planning might be different because there are no kids involved, then you’re wrong. You’re still going to have to select potential candidates who can the executor, aka the person who will take care of the assets and give them to the beneficiaries that you’ve declared in your will, during your life. You can appoint anyone as your executor.

It can be your sibling, someone from the family, and even a business partner. However, one thing that you need to remember is the fact that the person you’re appointing needs to be trustworthy and greedless.

Prepare In Advance

Estate planning is all about planning. Sounds cliché, right? Well, it is and you need to figure out things way before in advance. So, what, if you don’t have children? That doesn’t mean that you can’t plan for an estate.

It’s safer and smarter that way and no one will take advantage of your assets after your death if you’ve already dealt with it and planned for everything beforehand. These things are really important to go over and you shouldn’t waste any time on thinking or dwelling, because that’s not going to work.

Conclusion

Who says estate planning is only for people with kids? If you’re not someone who has children or a family, in general, then you can certainly do estate planning and these tips will help you out a ton. For proper estate planning advice, consult a wills and trust attorney Upper Marlboro.