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Estate planning–lifetime planning.

Crossland & Crossland is a Dedham law firm dedicated to providing comprehensive and highly personalized estate-planning and wealth preservation services to individuals, families, businesses, and corporations throughout Massachusetts. Our goal is to integrate state of the art estate planning techniques with the current rules of law that permit us to utilize our cutting edge services. We tirelessly make every effort to provide our clients with the tools they need for lifetime planning. By implementing a comprehensive and flexible estate plan, one may have full control and piece of mind concerning any property in their estate where full protection is solidified under the arm of the law. Our practice ranges from wills to corporate mergers.

Why a will?

There are many reasons to draft a will. It often becomes a top priority after children are born, loved ones pass away, or other life changing events. Another reason often overlooked is that without a will, you have provided no instructions regarding how to administer your estate. That means that The State (Massachusetts) has the final say. Your estate will be administered according to State law. No judge at Dedham district court or lawyer at the probate court can prove otherwise. Your assets will be distributed according to State law. Your intentions will be long forgotten. This is a vital issue to take into consideration when meeting with your attorney. Drafting a will is an important first step in addressing with your final decisions.

Alternatives

Wills eventually become public after your death, with the details of what you owned and how much it was worth available to anyone curious enough to read the court file. As a result, many people look for more private ways to transfer assets.
In Massachusetts, alternatives to making a will include:

• Life insurance policies or trusts
• Gifting cash or other assets before your death
• “Transfer On Death” (“TOD”) or “Payable On Death” (“POD”) bank accounts
• Holding assets by joint tenancy with right of survivorship (“JTROS”), with the assets transferring automatically to the other joint tenant at the time of death
• Holding assets through a tenancy in common, with each tenant having a divided interest in the property which can be independently sold
• Retirement plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”)
• “Revocable living trusts” (sometimes called “grantor trusts”), giving all your assets to a trustee for management before your death

A Health Care Proxy is an instrument (or document) that allows a patient to appoint an agent to make health care decisions in the event that the primary individual is incapable of executing such decisions. Once the document is drafted, the primary individual continues to be allowed to make health care decisions as long as they are still competent to do so. Health care proxies are permitted in forty-nine states as well as the District of Columbia. Health care proxies are by no means mandatory; rather they allow the patient’s wishes to be followed even when he/she is incapable of communicating them.The agent is empowered when a qualified physician determines that the primary individual is unable to make decisions regarding health care. The agent has the power to remove or sustain feeding tubes from the primary individual if these tubes are the only things that are keeping the primary individual alive. The agent’s decision stems from knowledge of the patient’s desire in this matter. If the primary individual made his or her wishes clear on the proxy form, then they must be followed despite any possible objections from the agent. Beyond this matter, if there are no limitations on the health care proxy form, the agent can make most other decisions in accordance with what the primary individual would have wanted. An agent will not be legally or financially liable for decisions made on behalf of the primary individual as long as they take into account the primary individual’s wishes and beliefs.