Estate planning is the development of a plan for managing your assets during your lifetime, in case of incapacity or upon your death. Only those assets in your name alone (or held as tenants in common) will pass according to the provisions of your Will. Assets held in survivorship or assets with beneficiaries designated outside of your Will (such as real estate held in survivorship, survivorship bank accounts, life insurance or annuities with designated beneficiaries, IRA or pension benefits with designated beneficiaries and funded trusts) pass directly to those survivors or designated beneficiaries regardless of the provisions of your Will. You should review all items of that nature to ensure that they will pass to your intended beneficiaries.

With a Will, you determine who will inherit your assets – you can provide specific bequests for jewelry and personal effects. If you have minor children you can name guardians for them. In Connecticut, age eighteen is the age of majority for financial matters. You can also provide in your Will for a simple trust – that if any beneficiary is under age twenty-one (the age you specify) at the time for distribution, his or her share is to be held in trust until the beneficiary reaches age twenty-one or later.

With a revocable trust a married couple can double the amounts that will pass free from the Connecticut estate tax and the Federal estate tax. The current exemption amount for the Connecticut estate tax is $12,920,000.00 for persons dying in 2023 and the Federal estate tax exemption is $12,920,000.00 for persons dying in 2023.

A durable power of attorney can enable someone to act for you – to collect your income and pay your bills.

A Durable Power of Attorney is effective immediately, gives to the recipient the ability to act for the party granting the power of attorney and survives one’s becoming incapacitated. Therefore, one should only grant a power of attorney to someone in whom he or she has implicit trust since the holder of the power of attorney could access one’s bank accounts, stock portfolio, real estate holdings and other assets.

A Springing Durable Power of Attorney is not effective immediately but could become effective when you are no longer capable of managing your affairs (and, if you have a durable power of attorney in place, when the person named is no longer capable of managing your affairs).

In the State of Connecticut, health care decisions such as the removal or refusal of extraordinary means of life support or artificial nutrition or artificial hydration may be made by a person you name as your representative for making health care decisions if you become unable to make those decisions. You may also name a contingent health care decision maker if the primary person named is unable to act.

A living will contains instructions with regard to one’s intentions regarding extraordinary means of life support should one become unable to communicate those intentions. The living will describes the procedures and/or medical treatments that someone would want to have administered (or would not want to have administered) if they were terminally ill or permanently unconscious with no reasonable chance for recovery. Those procedures include cardio pulmonary resuscitation, artificial nutrition and/or artificial hydration.

If you would like more information please call us at (203) 488-1000.

The following form is attached if you would like to use it to organize your information.