Espanola Estate Planning Lawyer

Espanola (also punctuated as Española) is a historic town where people strive to take care of their own. This close-knit atmosphere means that households look after their neighbors and that families try to pass down what they can for the next generation. That latter part is where estate planning can come in: with the right preparations in hand, you can protect the people you care about and leave them with the instructions they need to fully understand your wishes.

While it’s true that no one wants to think too hard about what happens when they die or get very sick, these situations can arise before you know it. An Espanola estate planning lawyer can help you decide what you want to happen when those moments do arrive. They’ll work with you to create the documents and strategies you need for your goals to become a reality.

Estate plans are one of the most important ways to show your loved ones you want them to be safeguarded, just in case the worst should occur. You can get started on creating, expanding, or updating your plans with the help of New Mexico Financial & Estate Planning Attorneys when you call us at (505) 503-1637 or contact us online to schedule a confidential, no-obligation appointment.

What Can an Espanola Estate Planning Attorney Do to Help Me?

“Estate planning” can mean many different things to many different people. The type of estate plan you want — including the documents and other arrangements you use — depends on your goals, your finances, your family situation, and other key details.

When you work with an estate planning attorney in Espanola, they can help you sort through the details of your estate while turning your goals into reliable legal strategies. You can then learn exactly what you need to do to maximize the chances that your goals will become reality.

This professionally guided approach differs from the DIY route. With DIY wills and estate planning, you have to rely on tools that are really only capable of giving you a generic, form-based version of documents. In most cases, these documents can’t be customized to the extent needed to seek the outcomes you want. Worse, they may fail to capture the nuances of estate planning. That means they may leave out the fact that you can add a transfer-on-death beneficiary to your bank account or carefully describe the types of care you’d want while on life support.

New Mexico Financial & Estate Planning Attorneys can help you build a personalized, one-of-a-kind estate plan based on existing drafts of documents, notes you’ve written down, or even just ideas in your head. We’ll help you get organized, so you can understand what’s needed to feel fully prepared for anything life might bring.

Examples of services we can provide include:

• Reviewing your asset portfolio to see what you want passed on to loved ones, including priority holdings like a house, farmland, shares in a business, or specific land rights
• Assessing your family dynamics, along with who you want to inherit the majority of your estate, helps you understand the best methods for doing so, as well as the challenges you could face
• Preparing for estate debts and claims that can only be resolved after your passing, such as passing down shares of jointly owned family land to the next generation
• Planning for your possible incapacitation, along with strategies you can use (like issuing a power of attorney) to ensure that you and your loved ones can be properly cared for in this situation
• Researching key estate details, such as ensuring that land has been surveyed or that easement rights are fully understood
• Drafting and properly executing the needed documents, including a will
• Arranging for beneficiary designations on all of your relevant accounts, including retirement plans, benefits programs, insurance policies, and banking accounts
• Exploring your options for joint tenancy titles, if desired, which can transfer real estate outside of probate quickly and smoothly
• Anticipating possible challenges or issues that could arise, especially if you have a complex family dynamic, such as children from a previous marriage
• Reviewing your estate plan documents and keeping them up to date, particularly after changes to your asset portfolio or revisions to relevant laws
• Advising and representing your estate representatives, if the need arises, such as by explaining your advance healthcare directive to your agent or by assisting your personal representative with probate, when the time comes

As you can see, our New Mexico estate planning law firm offers comprehensive services that you won’t find offered on a DIY website or similar “will mill” service. Come to us if you want to feel confident that your plans are matched to your unique life situation — and that you have left no stone unturned when making sure they are complete.

Do I Need a Valid Will for My Espanola Estate Plan?

Creating a will is one of the most important parts of estate planning. Even if you plan on using strategies to avoid probate, your will is a key document because it names your executor (known as your estate’s “personal representative” in court). It can also name your preferred guardian for your minor children or any adult dependents in your care.

Just as importantly, your will acts as a “last resort” measure in case the other parts of your estate plan don’t work the way you expected. You can include a contingency or residuary clause in your will to catch anything not handled by the rest of your estate plan, for example.

Many households in Espanola can handle the majority of their estate planning obligations through a will alone, in fact. While there are other transfer methods that can help you keep assets out of probate (more on that in a bit), your will can be used to handle the bulk of estate inheritances.

What Do I Need to Do for My Will to Be Valid?

According to New Mexico law (NM Stat § 45-2-502), a will must have the following characteristics:

• The will must be in writing, which means that unprinted electronic wills and oral/video wills are not allowed.
• The will must be signed by the testator, AKA the person who is creating their will. If the testator cannot sign, then they can direct someone to sign for them in their presence.
• Two competent adults must witness the testator’s signing (or the signing at their direction). The witnesses must then sign the document in front of each other and the testator.

A will can be created by anyone who is 18 years old or older (or an emancipated minor) and who is “of sound mind” (NM Stat § 45-2-501). That last part means that the will’s creator has to be conscious, mentally present, and able to understand that they are making a will.

If these conditions aren’t met, then a will can be declared invalid. The person’s estate then becomes “intestate.” That means all property that was supposed to be transferred according to the will must now be transferred according to specific state laws.

What Does “Intestate Succession” Mean for Espanola Estate Planning?

An estate that doesn’t have a valid will is considered intestate. In these cases, specific people are entitled to inherit the entire estate, according to state laws.

New Mexico laws (NM Stat § 45-2-102–103) provide that the following individuals must inherit an intestate estate:

• If the decedent (AKA the person who died) was married but did not have surviving children or other surviving direct descendants, then their spouse inherits everything.
• If the decedent had both a surviving spouse and surviving descendants, then the spouse inherits 100% of the estate’s community property and one quarter (¼) of the estate’s separate property. The surviving descendants split the remaining three-quarters (¾) of the separate property, split evenly between them.
• If the decedent did not have a surviving spouse, then their next-closest relatives inherit their property, in the following order of priority:
  • Children
  • Grandchildren
  • Parents
  • Siblings
  • Grandparents
  • Other next-of-kin

Note that the first-available category splits everything, leaving nothing for anyone else. These arrangements might be similar to what the decedent would have wanted, in select cases. But, in the vast majority of cases, the decedent would have preferred to give specific people specific assets.

The only way to avoid intestate succession is to have a valid will.

What Parts of My Estate Can I Transfer Outside of Probate?

Only some of your estate has to be transferred through a will. In fact, some estates go through careful planning to ensure that there’s nothing left (or next-to-nothing) to go through probate.

By using trusts or other creative arrangements, you can minimize the size of your probated estate. The advantages of this strategy include:

• Minimal delays for transferring assets to your spouse, children, or other chosen heir
• Reduced exposure to creditor claims and other disputed claims that can happen during probate
• The details of your estate are kept private, whereas probate and your will are part of the public record
• You can create more complicated arrangements than you could with a will alone, such as by putting family property, water rights, or other holdings into a trust that can last multiple generations.

Examples of types of transfers that can happen outside of probate include:

• Balances in accounts that have a transfer-on-death (TOD) or payable-on-death (POD) designation
• Property titled under a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship (JTWROS) deed
• Property gifted to someone by the decedent a year or more before their death
• Life insurance policy proceeds
• Retirement and benefit accounts with a beneficiary designation
• Property placed into a trust during the owner’s lifetime (AKA, a living trust)

If avoiding probate is one of your goals, make sure to mention this to your Espanola estate planning lawyer. They can help you go through your options and take the steps needed to handle as much of your property transfers as possible outside of your will.

What Is Incapacity Planning? How Does It Work in Espanola?

“Incapacity planning” refers to arrangements you put in place in case you are incapacitated. “Incapacity” means that you are in a mental state where you don’t fully understand what is happening and aren’t able to communicate in the way that someone with their full mental abilities could.

Incapacitation could result from:

• A traumatic accident that knocks you unconscious for days, weeks, or months
• A traumatic brain injury that makes it difficult or impossible to process thoughts, understand what’s going on around you, or communicate
• A medical condition, such as late-stage cancer, that leaves you too weak to fully understand or communicate
• A degenerative brain condition, such as Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia

When you are incapacitated, you can run into two major problems: no one has permission to make medical decisions for you, and your loved ones may be unable to access your accounts or handle other important business affairs.

In this situation, your family could be left without a way to pay your medical bills or cover their own living expenses. You also may end up receiving types of care you wouldn’t want, such as being put on a ventilator (AKA a breathing machine) for months at a time.

To resolve this problem, you can create the following documents:

• Durable financial power of attorney — This document names someone who can look after your finances, access your accounts, and stand in your place in other important business matters, including applying for benefits like Medicaid. This person (known as your “agent”) only has the permissions you give them, and they have to follow the instructions you leave them.
• Advance healthcare directive — This set of documents includes a healthcare power of attorney, which designates an agent to make medical decisions for you and to review your private health information. It also includes a set of instructions for care (sometimes called a “living will”) and the name of the doctor you want consulted to determine that you have been incapacitated.

Talk to your Espanola estate planning attorney to go over your options for incapacity planning. They can help you select someone you trust for either type of power of attorney (or both) and leave them instructions that account for your values, wishes, and concerns.

With the right preparations, you can know that the people you depend upon most will have what they need to make the decisions you would want, if you had capacity.

Schedule an Appointment With an Experienced Espanola Estate Planning Law Firm

New Mexico Financial & Estate Planning Attorneys is ready to help you review your estate, go through all of your options, and start working on the right strategies for your unique goals. The key is to get started now. It’s never too early to get going — but sometimes, it can be too late.

Find out what estate planning could look like for you when you call our firm at (505) 503-1637 or contact us online to schedule a no-obligation consultation today.