Los Lunas is a small town with a big heart. Families in this town work hard and save so they can give their loved ones the best chance to enjoy life. At the same time, they want to be able to look forward to what the future could have in store. When these families get the help of a Los Lunas estate planning lawyer, they can prepare for risks and plan for a future that could be brighter than ever.
Estate planning means making sure you have a will that’s up-to-date, but it can also mean so much more than that. Since we never know when a medical emergency could pop up, estate planning should also include incapacity planning. An advance healthcare directive can give your family instructions for what to do when you are in a coma or a mental state where you can’t make medical decisions on your own. While nobody wants to think too much about these types of situations, having a plan ensures that your wishes are known and that your family has the legal authority to carry them out.
In a way, estate planning is all about having more control over your future. It’s true that you can’t ever predict what can happen, but having an estate plan gives you the chance to decide what happens next.
Start the process that can give you greater peace of mind and help your family avoid heartache by reaching out to a Los Lunas estate planning attorney today. You can schedule a private, no-obligation discussion with an experienced lawyer from New Mexico Financial Law when you call us at (505) 503-1637 or contact us online.
Estate planning can involve making a lot of different preparations. All of these preparations have the same goal: getting you and your family ready in case the unexpected happens.
An estate plan can include any of the following.
Known typically as just “a will,” this document gives someone you name the legal right to give your hard-earned property to the people you choose. It can also name a guardian who you want to take care of your young children or any adults who depend on you for daily needs.
This set of documents includes a power of attorney for healthcare, instructions for how you want to be cared for when you are incapacitated (AKA a “living will”), and the name of the doctor you want consulted to decide if you are incapacitated.
We’d like to think that our spouse or other trusted people in our lives can go right ahead and handle our banking and other business while we are too sick to do so ourselves. But the reality is that the person you trust may need a legal document called a power of attorney to manage any of these tasks. Your power of attorney names an agent to handle your affairs while you are incapacitated. You can limit their abilities to only the things you want managed, or you could give them permission to do nearly anything you would otherwise be able to do on your own.
A trust is a special legal arrangement that takes ownership of property that used to be in your name. By putting property in a trust, you can keep it out of probate, and you can have a trustee look after it for you. You can be the trustee during your lifetime, and someone can take over for you when you pass. The backup trustee can distribute property immediately after your death, avoiding the delays of probate. Or, it can stay intact. With this second arrangement, your family can hang onto the trust and benefit from its property for years, decades, or even generations, depending on how you set it up.
You may be interested in other types of trusts, as well, such as an asset protection trust, a charitable trust, or a Miller trust. We’ll cover what some of these are in the section below, but be sure to ask a Los Lunas estate planning attorney about trusts to see which ones could be the best fit for your unique situation and goals.
A personal representative has to pay off all of your debts (including taxes) when you pass. Only then can they transfer the rest of your estate to the people you chose as your heirs. With some careful planning, you can make this process easier on them. You can also avoid some taxes with charitable donations or other arrangements, if your goal is to leave your loved ones as much as possible.
Even if you don’t think you use your phone or a computer much, we all leave behind digital assets these days. That can include important accounts like your online bank portal or something that’s mostly important to you, like the photos you’ve posted. You may even have some cryptocurrency or other valuable digital assets.
Digital asset planning means having a list of everything you want taken care of after you pass. It should include instructions for your estate’s personal representative or other loved ones on how to handle these assets.
Your estate plan could include something other than what’s listed here. It all depends on the assets you have now and the way you want everything prepared in case you suddenly pass or end up in a serious medical situation.
If you own a farm, lots of land, or a business, for example, you may want to consider making special arrangements like a trust to avoid having it mishandled, while also helping it all skip probate.
Talk to a Los Lunas estate planning lawyer to get specific information on how to best prepare for what may lie ahead. Your attorney can listen closely to you as you go over your family situation, your finances, your goals, the risks you want to prepare for, and anything else you can think of that’s relevant. They can then recommend the ideal strategy to set yourself and your family up so you don’t have to worry about what tomorrow may bring.
In many ways, a will is one of the most important documents you’ll make in your life. After all, it takes care of all the property you earned or were given in your lifetime.
Without a will, you die “intestate,” which means that state laws decide who inherits everything — not you. New Mexico’s laws for intestacy (which can be found in Chapter 45, Article 2 of the New Mexico Statutes) require that anyone handling your estate give all of your property to the following people:
Intestate succession may not sound so bad, but it can really put your loved ones in a bind. They may need to make hard decisions about how to divide everything, and that could force them to sell your home, your business, or other things they would rather have inherited intact. Not to mention: what you would have wanted doesn’t really enter into it. Without a will, you don’t have a say once you’re gone.
Your will is also your opportunity to name a personal representative, who is the person responsible for dealing with all of your affairs. They may also be called an executor or administrator in certain contexts. This person has to handle everything about your estate, which is all the property you leave behind. Since you’d likely want to be able to name who that could be, rather than the courts, your will is important because it can do just that.
Making a will doesn’t have to be complicated. You can make it as simple as you want, but the key is to make it while you still have the ability to do so. A Los Lunas estate planning lawyer can help you out, and they can make sure you do it the right way so that your will can be used in the way you expected.
You can put just about anything you want in your will, but it has to be clear that you intend for it to be used to handle your final affairs. You want to use language that won’t cause confusion or make it difficult to carry out your instructions. You also want to include things like a “residuary clause,” which basically gives away any property not mentioned in the will to a person or group of people — just in case something’s not covered in the rest of the will.
Per state law, your will has to be in writing, and it should be dated. For it to be considered valid, you have to sign it (or have it signed by someone) in front of two witnesses. Those witnesses then have to sign the will themselves in front of you and one another. You can also have it notarized, which can make it easier to prove that it’s the genuine article when the time comes.
Not every piece of property is transferred to your heirs through a will, meaning that it can skip probate and get to who you want to have it that much faster. Examples of assets that skip probate include:
If you don’t have much else left outside of these assets, your estate may be able to qualify as a “small estate” and skip probate altogether. Your loved ones can sign for the rest of your property using an “Affidavit of Successor in Interest,” so long as the total value of the probated estate is less than $50,000 and doesn’t include any real property (i.e., homes or land).
You can speak to a Los Lunas estate planning lawyer about preparing for probate or arranging for probate services in case your personal representative needs help when the time comes.
There may come a time when you are so sick, injured, or wounded to the point that you’re unable to communicate or remember things. This is called being “incapacitated.” When this happens, your loved ones might need permission to make medical decisions for you or handle your business.
Giving them (or someone else you trust) the authority to handle these matters requires a power of attorney. A power of attorney is simply a document that says you give them permission to do specific things. You can list everything they’re able to do, or you can give them the general authority to handle just about anything you could on your own.
Without giving someone power of attorney, they may need to obtain a court order for guardianship and conservatorship. These orders give them the authority to take care of you, handle your finances, and do everything else that’s needed on your behalf. The drawback is that it can take a lot of time and effort — and, usually, money — to go through the trouble of getting guardianship and conservatorship. Making matters more complicated, they can’t really be limited in their authority once they get both.
A power of attorney can let you skip the process of guardianship and conservatorship. That means the person you trust to handle everything gets to step in right when you need them to. You also have the ability to limit their power, such as by keeping them out of certain accounts or preventing them from doing something like selling land. You can also make their authority limited, so if you recover to the point where you can handle things on your own again, they have to step aside.
Arranging for power of attorney can get complicated, and you want to be sure that the plans you make will be able to help you when the time comes. To get it done right, you can work with an experienced Los Lunas estate planning attorney who can help you understand your options and pick the best ones for your situation.
New Mexico Financial Law has been around for over a decade, and our attorneys have been practicing for even longer than that. By working with a knowledgeable and reliable lawyer from our estate planning law firm in Los Lunas, you can know that everything is set up so you don’t have to worry about what might happen if a tragedy strikes.
We know it’s hard sitting down and dealing with these heavy matters, but we’ve been helping people in Los Lunas and throughout the state with wills and trusts for many years. You can trust our New Mexico estate planning law firm to help you go over all of your options and pick the right ones for your family — as well as the future you want them to have.
Give our Los Lunas estate planning law firm a call at (505) 503-1637 or contact us online to get started with a no-obligation consultation.
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