One of the best resources at your disposal when attempting to create a means by which to distribute your assets after your death is an estate planning attorney, mostly because of the many different ways in which he or she can assist you. Listed below are two reasons to hire an estate planning attorney.

Provides Options To Help You Control How Your Assets Will Be Used

One of the biggest reasons to hire an estate planning attorney is that he or she can provide you with options that can help you exert more control over how your assets will be used once you pass away. One way that this can be accomplished is by helping you to create a trust fund with certain requirements that must be met before the funds are distributed to your beneficiaries. For example, you can create a trust fund that will require that one of your beneficiaries reaches a certain age or level of education before they will have any access to the money that you are leaving behind.

The requirements that your beneficiary must meet to take control of the funds could also include such things as having to be married or have children before the money is distributed. Another way that a trust fund can help you control how your assets are handled upon your death is to create an irrevocable trust.

An irrevocable trust is a type of trust that once you put money in the fund, you lose all control over that money because it no longer really belongs to you. The benefit to an irrevocable trust is that it is often exempt from inheritance or estate taxes, which means that you can greatly limit how much money will be deducted from the trust and thus increase the amount of control you have over how much money your beneficiary will receive.

Provides Conflict Resolution Services For Your Beneficiaries

Another way that an estate planning attorney can help you out is by providing conflict resolution services in the event that your beneficiaries are unhappy with how your assets were distributed and choose to dispute your estate plan or will. One way that an estate planning attorney can help is by attempting to get your beneficiaries to negotiate a compromise, such as having them share a vehicle or piece of real estate that may be the cause of the dispute.

Another that an estate planning attorney can help resolve disputes is by explaining to the beneficiaries or a court the reasons behind why you distributed the assets the way you did. Since you will likely end up spending an extended amount of time with your estate planning attorney before you pass away, your estate planning attorney will likely have more insight into what you were thinking when you chose who would get which assets and why than your beneficiaries would. In many cases, reviewing the thought process behind the way assets were distributed can often help resolve the issue in a more timely manner, whether that resolution comes in the form of a court judgment in favor of keeping the assets where they are or convincing the beneficiaries to end the dispute.

Make an appointment with a local estate planning attorney, like one from Skeen Law Offices, today to discuss what services he or she can offer when it comes to planning out how your estate and assets will be handled after you pass away. An estate planning attorney can help you out by providing options that can help you control how your assets will be used after you pass away while also providing conflict resolution services if your beneficiaries are unhappy with the distribution of your estate.