Plan Your Estate

If you are like most Americans and do not expect to have a multi-million dollar estate when you die, then this isn't the book for you. Just max out your IRA and 401(k), and read a book about living trusts. (However, you might still be interested to learn how many ways the super-rich can circumvent estate taxes by legal artifice.) If you do have a substantial estate, then this book is a great place to start. If nothing else, it tells you whether or not you need a lawyer. Even if you do, I would still recommend reading this book cover-to-cover, so that you fully understand your estate plan and are aware of the alternatives, as well as of the implications of tax law changes. It's a shame that laymen have to waste their brainpower worrying about such unnecessary complexity as financial estate planning, but so long as the majority suffer from the delusion that this is an effective means of taxation, we're stuck with it. This book will guide you through the complexity.

At first I was hesitant about doing something so important as planning my estate without a lawyer but this book really changed my mind. It is comprehensive, well organized and very easy to use. Plan Your Estate took me through every step of the process, even the more complicated parts such as providing for both my child from my first marriage and my current family. This book includes sample estate plans so you can get a better idea of what you want to do and even includes the tricky state-by-state rules.I bought both this book and Estate Planning for Dummies but ended up only using this one. I'm so happy about how much money I saved in legal fees by doing it myself that I've been recommending it to everyone!

BOTTOM LINE: Many people looking into getting an attorney to prepare a simple will have probably had sticker shock - several hundred dollars minimum for a competent attorney to prepare it. But as this book explains, do it yourself estate lawyering, while not prudent for complex situations, is clearly within the reach of those with even moderately complex situations and the patience to spend a leisurely weekend reading this book.WHAT IT COVERS: This book is primarily a primer, explaining the foundations of estate planning including: an overview and whether you actually need to spend time reading the book and drafting estate docs, drafting a will, how to think about what assets will go to which family members and other beneficiaries, financial instruments such as brokerage accounts/bank accounts/life insurance and how they fit into wealth transfer, as well as powers of attorney and health care directives. What I like best about the book is that you know you are getting candid advice from someone not trying to bill you by the hour or sell you variable annuity life insurance. In my own area of expertise - finance - the fact that the author's opinion regarding life insurance is dead on (tax planning should be kept separate from investing strategies and as such variable annuities are complete bunk) gives me great comfort that I'm getting straight shooting advice in the rest of the book.WHAT IT CAN BE USED FOR: The book can serve readers on two different levels. If you are going to get a lawyer anyway but are the type of person that wants to be educated when you talk to lawyers/accountants/brokers, this book will have you speaking the same language and is an easy read over the course of a weekend. If you want to prepare an estate plan yourself, this book serves as an ample resource to help create the necessary docs. The fill-in forms in the back are certainly capable of serving as the basis for your basic estate docs, but at the same time it may be more comforting to most people to have a seamless document that they are not penciling in blanks, which leads to my next point...THINK ABOUT GETTING THE COMPANION SOFTWARE: This book is published by Nolo Press, a well-respected publisher of legal self-help books. They also publish a software title in conjunction with Quicken (makers of the financial planning software) called Quicken Lawyer which not only has an offline/online legal manual with much of the info included in this book, but its main function is to create a battery of estate documents for you through very simple step-by-step interviews - you answer the questions, it drafts the legalese, you print and execute it. I would almost recommend just getting the software instead b/c there is a decent offline/online manual included, but for those that really want to know the why behind what they're doing, get this book and the software. See my review on Quicken Lawyer Personal Deluxe for more info.LIMITATIONS: The book readily admits there ar

I am a practicing trusts and estate lawyer and bought this book for straight-shooting, plain english explanations of complicated estate planning techniques. The author does a marvelous job simplifying complex issues and his explanations are well thought out and easy to understand. I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of doing some estate planning and wants to understand what their lawyer is saying to them.