We spend years building our legacy through our relationships and work, and yet most of us are reluctant to thoughtfully craft an estate plan to protect that legacy.

A well-designed estate plan is essential to protect your most cherished relationships and hard-earned assets, and ultimately saves significant money, time and stress. Frequent goals of estate planning are to protect assets for your children or loved ones, make life easier on those you love, avoid probate, avoid gift and estate taxes, and generally to leave the world a better place after your passing.

An intelligently designed estate plan will emphasize the relationships, assets, and causes most important to you, and will preserve family harmony during stressful and difficult times of incapacity or death. Unfortunately, many people neglect preparing (and maintaining) an estate plan, leaving behind an unintentional trail of unenforceable promises, poorly suited or undesirable gifts to now-distant family members or now-lost friends, family trauma and drama, muddled or unstated intentions, and stress and cost for those people they care about the most.