Estate Planning and Probate

Estate planning covers the transfer of property at death as well as a variety of other personal matters. A well drafted estate plan not only addresses the distribution of assets upon death but also designates who will manage your assets and make health care and personal care decisions for you if you ever become unable to do so for yourself.

At Rull & Associates, we provide comprehensive estate planning services to meet each client’s individual needs. These services include: wills, asset protection trusts, irrevocable trusts, health care proxies, durable powers of attorney, and living wills. Regardless of the size of your estate, our lawyers serve individual clients who seek to transfer assets efficiently to their chosen beneficiaries. Our estate planning documents ensure that upon incapacity or death your intentions with your personal affairs are met.

As a part of our estate planning services, we also consider the impact of federal income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes on the transmission of wealth. We often help our clients achieve tax savings by establishing trusts for the benefit of family members. We also advise our clients about the many forms of charitable giving that may be used to reduce taxes. Planning of this nature includes providing for the special needs of family members, protecting family assets, and assuring professional management of those assets.

Probate Administration

One of the goals of estate planning is to avoid the need for probate at the time of death whenever possible. In some cases, however, avoidance of probate is not possible. Probate administration includes the probate process as well as non-probate transfers of the deceased’s assets, such as life insurance, annuities, qualified plans, and trust assets and compliance with applicable estate tax requirements. Rull & Associates has experience in administering probate estates. Our lawyers assist the personal representative of the estate in the gathering, valuation, accounting and distribution of the decedent’s assets and filing state and federal estate tax returns. If you have been named an executor, you should contact Rull & Associates to review and discuss the contents and directives of the will and to assist you in the process of carrying out your fiduciary duties.