All of us at Best & Flanagan hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe during this time. Our office is open remotely and we are maintaining normal business hours and after hours as needed. We are taking new clients and serving existing clients. Please know we are here to help during this time and afterward when we all come out of this together.
We want to comment on a few topics which may be pertinent to the current health crisis and downturn of the financial markets.
Estate Planning Documents
Times of stress and crisis may accelerate the need to create estate planning documents or to make changes to existing documents. We are here to help you create documents or make changes. Please do not create estate planning documents or make changes to your existing documents yourselves. Estate planning documents should be carefully drafted as there are traps for the unfamiliar. In addition, estate planning documents have strict execution requirements such as witnesses and notaries.
Trusts, wills, powers of attorney, and health care directives are of primary importance. Please contact us if you need these documents or need to change any of these existing documents. We will work with you to ensure your documents are valid and effectuate your wishes.
Wealth Transfer Opportunities
The combination of the market downturn and the historic reduction in interest rates presents estate planning opportunities for some clients. If you have been thinking of transferring wealth to eliminate estate taxes and protect family wealth, now may be a good time to do it. There are a variety of strategies but the most prominent are gifting outright or to trusts, low interest rate family loans, and grantor retained annuity trusts (GRAT). We stand ready to discuss these opportunities with you.
Best & Flanagan Team
Our Private Wealth Planning group is here to serve you. We include ten estate planning attorneys (accomplished and well decorated as Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, and ACTEC members) and four extremely experienced paralegals who specialize in tax, estate planning and elder law. In addition to Minnesota, we are licensed in Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Dakota, California, and Nevada.
Our whole team stands with you.