Anyone who owns a home and has a family should use estate planning to protect significant assets. Many people have more assets that might include a home, one or more vehicles, and retirement accounts. A life insurance policy is another potentially significant asset that helps to protect a family's standard of living and enables policyholders to leave a financial legacy for any heirs. Here are some key steps you should take in your estate planning journey.

Create a Legally Binding Will

When you eventually pass on, an estate plan helps to determine how your assets are distributed by using your legally binding will. A properly drafted, witnessed, and filed will greatly reduces potential stress during an already awful time for your family. However, according to Advance Capital Management, 55% of adults in the USA pass away without a will or an estate plan.

Ensure a Financial Legacy

An estate plan helps you to create trusts that hold financial assets and possibly tangible assets that you can pass on to your heirs. You can add, subtract, or modify existing trusts as needed to reflect any changes in your life. You might have a newborn child, go through a divorce, or endure other life-changing events that create a need to modify an existing estate plan.

Protect Family and Business Assets

You also can use trusts to protect significant financial assets and property to protect your family and any business interests that you might have. The trusts can help to protect against tax liabilities, lawsuits, or other matters that otherwise might affect them. You still control them, but the trusts and other estate planning tools make it possible to preserve them for your family, business partners, and future generations yet to come.

Determine Protocols for Medical Emergencies

One of the more troubling decisions anyone might have to make in life is when to put a loved one on life support and when not to do it. You can create an estate plan that determines in advance what your wishes are for life support that might be needed to keep you alive. You could determine which types of life support you would accept versus which types you would not want. Making such decisions in your estate plan will help to relieve the burden that otherwise would be placed on your family.

Establishing an estate plan and ensuring it remains up-to-date is an important part of caring for your home and family. Call Estate Law Solutions today or submit an online request to schedule a consultation with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you learn more about the importance of estate planning for your family.