In this Elder Law Minute, Wes Coulson wants you to imagine estate planning as a relay race.
Transcript:
Hi! I’m Wes Coulson from Dent-Coulson Elder Law, proudly serving clients throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area and beyond. I’d like to welcome you to our Elder Law and Estate Planning Minute. We do these to help educate people, give them some little tips, and especially to let them know the questions they need to ask, things that they’ve maybe not thought of. Our thought on that is that we can help you best if you realize the things that you need help and that we can help you with. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks!
I want you, for a minute, to think of estate planning as being a relay race. Now, what the heck do I mean by that. Well, if you watch a relay race, you’ll never see a time where one runner runs and they drop the baton onto the ground, and then the next runner comes along, looks for it, picks it up, and starts running from a dead stop. Instead, it’s always the baton pass, involves the two runners running alongside each other so the next one can get up to speed before that baton is passed, and they move on with no delay.
So, here’s how that applies to estate planning. In a lot of cases, people will name someone as a successor, but not share any financial information with them; not bring them into the fold in terms of doing things, and taking over for them, if they become incapacitated or after they die. And the person taking over is that next runner in the race whose having to look around for the baton, find it, start from scratch uncertainty. You don’t want to do that, you want to bring somebody who is going to be taking over in, start sharing information with them, so that if they need to take over, they’re going to do a good job for you. Thanks!
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Dent-Coulson Elder Law is dedicated to providing families in the St. Louis area with their Elder Law needs. Our practice areas include Asset Preservation Planning, Veterans Benefits, Medicaid Eligibility, Alzheimer’s Planning, Special Needs Planning, Estate Planning and more. We understand the financial challenges you may face as you and your loved ones grow older. At Dent-Coulson Elder Law, our clients’ well-being is our number one priority. For immediate help, call (618) 632-7000 (IL) or (314) 567-9292 (MO), or Contact Us and we will get in touch as soon as possible.
