Estate Planning Made Simple

Estate Planning involves the preparation of the management of your assets after you have passed. Although we don’t tend to think about what happens after we are gone, thinking about the management of your assets can be beneficial in lessening the stress for loved ones and ensuring their future financial security.

There are a number of tools you can use to reduce the burden on loved ones should anything happen to you. Listed below are a few of these instruments and how they can be used.

Will

A Will is a legal document that details what you wish to happen with your assets after you pass away. It will name the person or persons you want to be your executor, it will state who is to receive your assets when you die, and it may stipulate any further details including your funeral desires or any guardians of your children.

Enduring Power of Attorney

A ‘General Power of Attorney’ is a document that individuals use to allow another person to make decisions on their behalf regarding their finances, business, and personal matters. An ‘Enduring Power of Attorney’ is given with the intention that it will continue to be effective, even after you lose mental capacity.

Enduring Guardianship

An ‘Enduring Guardian’ can make decisions for you in areas such as accommodation, health, and services if you lose the capacity to make your own decisions at some time in the future. It differs from a ‘Power of Attorney’ in that they cannot make decisions about your money or assets.

It’s important that your individual Estate Planning needs are considered and this article only discusses the basics. In order to discuss this in more detail, we recommend seeking professional advice by contacting the team at Crest Financial Services.

Are you a Superhero?

Unfortunately, the reality is that we don’t have to look very far to see the terrible emotional and financial impact that sickness and death can have on the lives of our friends, family and loved ones.

So it is important that when taking on any additional debt, such as buying a house or re-financing a home loan, that you conduct a ‘reality check’ to determine the potential risks and how best to protect against them.

A simple starting point is to ask yourself:

How long would my family be able to keep our home (i.e. keep making the monthly repayments):

• If I (or my partner) died tomorrow?
• If I had to stop work due to health issues or an accident?

If the answer means the house would have to be sold at some point, then an immediate analysis of your Life insurance requirements should be completed.

Personal insurances, such as Life insurance, Income Protection, Trauma and Total and Permanent Disability policies, normally form a key part of protecting your situation. These can be tailored to ensure that debts and cost of living expenses can continue to be met, no matter what life throws at you.

It is true that the above events may entitle you to some Work Cover, Centrelink Disability Support Pension or the ability to access part of your super. However, in our experience these benefits (on their own), are usually not enough to save the family home from being sold.

At Crest Financial Services, as part of our financial planning process, we assist clients to put in place appropriate personal insurances and advise on how to best structure these to minimise cost and impact on your daily cash flow.

Become a real superhero for your family, and get advice on how to best protect them.