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Advisors Told to Look Beyond Wills in Estate Planning
Estate planning attorneys say advisors should ask about coordinated plans, not just wills, during National Make-A-Will Month. Gaps in account titles and beneficiary designations often undermine even well-drafted documents.
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National Make-A-Will Month gives financial advisors a hook to raise estate planning with clients. The conversation should not stop at whether the client has a will. The better question, several estate planning attorneys said, is whether the client has a coordinated plan that works during incapacity, at death, and for the beneficiaries.
Financial advisors see account titles, beneficiary designations, insurance coverage, liquidity, spending, family changes, and account transfers. Those are the places where many estate plans succeed or fail, according to Thomas Tietz, a partner at Shenkman Tietz. A client may have excellent documents but still have an ineffective plan if brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, joint accounts, and transfer-on-death designations are inconsistent with those documents.