From there we proceed to evaluate your potential need for planning for incapacity and long term care planning, issues dealing with elder law, and whether your objectives can best be met with an irrevocable trust, a revocable living trust, a life estate deed, an enhanced life estate deed (lady bird deed), or other appropriate planning techniques that work for you within the estate planning laws in Florida.
We examine federal estate tax issues, as well as income tax planning issues. We then develop a blueprint for the Florida will and trust, and other appropriate ancillary estate planning documents, such as a power of attorney, that will be needed to accomplish the protection of your assets during your lifetime, and the care and the management of your assets in the event of your disability or incapacity, and the efficient transfer of wealth at your death through avoiding probate.
If you have a family member or loved one who has special needs as a result of mental, emotional or physical disabilities, we will help you understand the benefits, and requirements, of special needs trusts so that you can help provide meaningful support for that family member without risking the loss of any of the public benefits to which that family member is or may become entitled. We can prepare a special needs trust document that will effectively provide the support you want for your loved one, without causing a loss of the public benefits. We can also provide guidance and instruction on the proper administration of a special needs trust, and help you find an appropriate institutional trustee for the special needs trust.
At each stage of the estate planning process we take into consideration avoiding estate taxes as well as the income tax implications, of every will and trust. We consider, every aspect of your estate plan, including asset protection and wealth preservation. There is little benefit to having a great estate plan, if all of your assets can be lost to creditors because the assets were not properly titled or structured to legally protect them against creditor claims. We help you evaluate the opportunities for long term asset protection planning for the next generation, and successive generations to minimize taxes throughout the successive generations. We also help you identify strategies for life insurance and more complex estate planning when that is appropriate.
We help our clients evaluate options for charitable planning from the perspective of income tax savings, as well as major philanthropy through private foundations, charitable trusts, donor advised funds, or supporting organizations.
Our estate planning documents, the last will and testament and the living trust, are designed to achieve all of the estate planning, asset protection, special needs, or other objectives you want incorporated into your estate plan. Each Florida legal document, whether basic will, complex will, revocable or irrevocable trust, is tailored to meet the specific requirements of your unique circumstances. The Florida wills and trusts documents that we prepare for you are so unique and specific to you and your estate planning goals and objectives, that we copyright each one of them.
If you need legal advice to plan for your potential incapacity, long term care, asset protection, income and estate tax savings, wills and irrevocable or revocable trusts, or for someone in your family who has special needs issues, please contact the Jacksonville estate planning, probate, elder law, guardianship and asset protection lawyers and attorneys at The Coleman Law Firm so that we can put our 30+ years of experience to work to help you design and implement a plan that meets your unique needs and helps you avoid probate and avoid estate taxes (avoiding the death tax).
You can contact your Jacksonville estate planning lawyer, toll free at
866-510-9099, or by email at Info@TheColemanLawFirm.com.
In the following paragraphs, we will discuss briefly several of the major topics providing legal information about Florida law included in this website. There is a more detailed discussion of each topic on the pages that follow.
Thank you for visiting with us and if you have any questions or if we can provide you additional information, please be sure to let us know.
FLORIDA ADVANCE DIRECTIVES
Advance directives include several different documents that are all designed to provide for some aspect of your care in the event of your absence or incapacity and includes end of life decisions and planning with living wills.
The most common of these documents is the durable power of attorney. The durable power of attorney allows you to designate the person or persons you want to handle your business and financial affairs in the event of your absence or incapacity. You should expect your durable power of attorney to be drafted to deal with your specific circumstances. It is not a one size fits all, cookie-cutter document. The Florida Power of Attorney statute that became effective October 1, 2011 dictates that several options should be explained to you so that you understand what rights you can delegate and concerns you should consider with the delegation of these rights.
If both you and your spouse are in your first marriage, the marriage is of long term duration, and you have one set of common children, your durable power of attorney most likely should be different from the power of attorney for someone who is in a second or third marriage, and there are children from a previous marriage. Perhaps you and your spouse have children together, and you want your assets to be available for your spouse’s support and comfort after your death, but you want your assets to go to your children after your spouse’s death. A Florida specific durable power of attorney can include provisions to allow your attorney-in-fact to change your last will and testament or your revocable living trust, as well as beneficiary designations for life insurance policies or retirement plans; or your Florida specific durable power of attorney can exclude these provisions, and include others.
If you need the assistance of an estate planning attorney in Jacksonville, or throughout Florida, please call us toll free at
866-510-9099, or email us at Info@TheColemanLawFirm.com.
Your durable power of attorney can be drafted to include provisions for the care of pets, for the operation of a business or farm, or for any other specific circumstance you want covered. The more complete and specific a durable power of attorney is drafted, the more likely it is that the durable power of attorney will serve the purpose you intended. As you review the related section of this website dealing with Power of Attorney law, keep in mind that you have the right to a power of attorney that is designed to be as comprehensive or as limited as you want it to be. That is a responsibility your estate planning lawyer should provide.
Other advance directives include the Designation of Health Care Surrogate, the Declaration of Pre-Need Guardian, and the Living Will. Again, though there are statutory forms for each of these documents, your advance directives should be designed to accomplish your specific desires and deal with your unique concerns. Even the living will, made famous by the Terry Schiavo case, can be annotated to provide coverage of things that may be more important to you than to other people. In many, perhaps most cases, the Florida statutory forms are satisfactory and legally sufficient. [For a free Florida Living Will legal form download, or a free Florida Designation of Health Care Surrogate legal form, please go to our page for Free Legal Forms.] You have the right to insist that your estate planning documents are tailored to your needs.
For more information about advance directives, including how to create a living will, health care powers of attorney or durable powers of attorney, please contact The Coleman Law Firm at
(904) 448-1969 [toll free at
866-510-9099] or email us at Info@TheColemanLawFirm.com