Tuft & Arnold, PLLC can assist you in your estate planning needs. No matter the size of your estate, nearly everyone can benefit from having a will prepared. It allows you to divide up your estate in accordance with your specific wishes, and offers some guidance to your loved ones as to what your wishes and intentions are. Within a will you can do the following:

A Power of Attorney is a legal document that grants the person of your choice the power to handle your banking, real or personal property, business, and many other transactions in the event you are physically unavailable to perform them yourself or in the event you become mentally incapacitated.

A Health Care Directive is a legal document used to specify the health care you would like to receive under certain circumstances. In addition, it allows you to state your wishes as to how your remains will be handled following your death. In the Health Care Directive you can state whether you wish to be cremated or buried; whether you wish to donate your organs; and whether you wish for an autopsy to be performed for the purpose of diagnosis, medical education, or research.

Probate is a court proceeding used to transfer ownership of a deceased person’s (decedent’s) assets to his or her heirs, after paying any outstanding debts of the decedent. There are many different kinds of probate proceedings. Whether a decedent dies intestate (without a valid will) or testate (with a valid will) will determine which proceeding is needed. In addition, distribution of the decedent’s estate can be supervised or unsupervised by the Court depending upon the complexity of the estate or whether the heirs are at odds over how the estate should be distributed. Also, the proceeding can be an informal process if the estate is small and there is no real estate involved, or it can be formal if there is real estate involved.