Customer Reviews

Plan Your Estate: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Protect Your Loved Ones (Plan Your Estate National Edition)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a practicing trusts and estate lawyer and bought this book for straight-shooting, plain english explanations of complicated estate planning techniques. The author does a marvelous job simplifying complex issues and his explanations are well thought out and easy to understand. I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of doing some estate planning and wants to understand what their lawyer is saying to them.

BOTTOM LINE: Many people looking into getting an attorney to prepare a simple will have probably had sticker shock - several hundred dollars minimum for a competent attorney to prepare it. But as this book explains, do it yourself estate lawyering, while not prudent for complex situations, is clearly within the reach of those with even moderately complex situations and the patience to spend a leisurely weekend reading this book.

WHAT IT COVERS: This book is primarily a primer, explaining the foundations of estate planning including: an overview and whether you actually need to spend time reading the book and drafting estate docs, drafting a will, how to think about what assets will go to which family members and other beneficiaries, financial instruments such as brokerage accounts/bank accounts/life insurance and how they fit into wealth transfer, as well as powers of attorney and health care directives. What I like best about the book is that you know you are getting candid advice from someone not trying to bill you by the hour or sell you variable annuity life insurance. In my own area of expertise - finance - the fact that the author's opinion regarding life insurance is dead on (tax planning should be kept separate from investing strategies and as such variable annuities are complete bunk) gives me great comfort that I'm getting straight shooting advice in the rest of the book.

WHAT IT CAN BE USED FOR: The book can serve readers on two different levels. If you are going to get a lawyer anyway but are the type of person that wants to be educated when you talk to lawyers/accountants/brokers, this book will have you speaking the same language and is an easy read over the course of a weekend. If you want to prepare an estate plan yourself, this book serves as an ample resource to help create the necessary docs. The fill-in forms in the back are certainly capable of serving as the basis for your basic estate docs, but at the same time it may be more comforting to most people to have a seamless document that they are not penciling in blanks, which leads to my next point...

THINK ABOUT GETTING THE COMPANION SOFTWARE: This book is published by Nolo Press, a well-respected publisher of legal self-help books. They also publish a software title in conjunction with Quicken (makers of the financial planning software) called Quicken Lawyer which not only has an offline/online legal manual with much of the info included in this book, but its main function is to create a battery of estate documents for you through very simple step-by-step interviews - you answer the questions, it drafts the legalese, you print and execute it. I would almost recommend just getting the software instead b/c there is a decent offline/online manual included, but for those that really want to know the why behind what they're doing, get this book and the software. See my review on Quicken Lawyer Personal Deluxe for more info.

LIMITATIONS: The book readily admits there are situations that require an attorney and points out throughout the book which situations require it. In general, get an attorney if you expect to owe federal estate tax (threshold is currently estates over $1.5 mm, but rising rapidly through 2010), have an ex-wife or two, have kids that don't speak to each other, or other complex family dynamic.

I have read about 10 books on estate planning, and this is by far the clearest, best organized, and most comprehensive of the lot. The authors cover the issues of trusts, tax planning and tax reduction, and asset preservation. This is the book to start with, and is really as good as they get.

Before you go to a lawyer, read this book! It will save you time - giving you information to be able to ask the most pertinent and specific questions - and therefore save you money!

Now in a newly updated and expanded seventh edition, Plan Your Estate is a resource provided by attorneys Denis Clifford and Cora Jordan which is packed from cover to cover with everything anyone needs to know to ensure their worldly goods are promptly willed to loved ones. Written in no-nonsense terms that the non-specialist general reader can readily grasp, individual chapters clearly address wills, how to avoid probate, living trusts, property-control trusts, naming guardians for children and leaving property to children, estate taxes, living wills, how to reduce estate taxes, and much, much more. Especially recommended for individuals who own a business or who have children from a former marriage, Plan Your Estate is a "must-have", "do-it-yourself" legal resource, which is applicable to all American states except for Louisiana. Even those who prefer to let a professional handle the whole process of estate planning would be well served to read Plan Your Estate cover to cover, before stepping into an attorney's office where time is money and the clock is running.

At first I was hesitant about doing something so important as planning my estate without a lawyer but this book really changed my mind. It is comprehensive, well organized and very easy to use. Plan Your Estate took me through every step of the process, even the more complicated parts such as providing for both my child from my first marriage and my current family. This book includes sample estate plans so you can get a better idea of what you want to do and even includes the tricky state-by-state rules.
I bought both this book and Estate Planning for Dummies but ended up only using this one. I'm so happy about how much money I saved in legal fees by doing it myself that I've been recommending it to everyone!

If you expect to have a $1,000,000+ estate and want to understand your tax saving options, this book is excellent. It's readable, usually clear, well organized & well indexed. It progresses into many advanced topics such as QTIP trusts, GSTT trusts, GRATs, GRUTs, GRITs, etc. and explains them in good detail, with examples. Includes some very useful state-by-state info.

You'll work much better with your lawyer if you read this book first.

I read a library copy, but then bought my own.

This book works well with Condon's Beyond the Grave, which is much weaker on the nuts and bolts of estate tax planning but much better at getting you to think through the human (family conflict) side.

I have read about 10 books on estate planning, and this is by far the clearest, best organized, and most comprehensive of the lot. The authors cover the issues of trusts, tax planning and tax reduction, and asset preservation. This is the book to start with, and is really as good as they get.

This book provides an easy to understand overview of estate planning plus easy to understand detail on many special circumstances. It is very easy to understand which estate planning techniques are right for you, and there are many examples that illustrate how the techniques work. Approximately half of this book is relevant to everyone. The other half gives clear, common sense explantions of advanced planning techniques that are typically reserved for those fortunate enough to be planning a high net worth estate (lets say $1M+). The advanced techniques are not for do it yourselfers, but the book gives you a good understanding of the issues and lets you converse intelligently with an attorney.

The focus of this book is to explain what approaches are out there for use in estate planning, with discussion of the pros and cons of various tactics, so that you can figure out what it is you want to do for your own estate. It seems very thorough and clearly written.

This book is in its 10th edition, which means it has had time to mature and be improved and expanded many times. It has a carefully-thought-out organization with 12 items of focus (e.g. children, avoiding probate, imposing controls over property, sample estate plans, etc). Each of these topics has a section of the book devoted to it, with 1 to 7 chapters in each section (32 chapters total). Chapter 1 briefly introduces each of these topics.

Besides the usual concerns (avoiding probate, tax-saving techniques) this book seems to anticipate many issues I haven't thought about such as, simultaneous deaths, non-citizen spouses, care of a child with special needs, posthumously conceived children (via medical technology), etc. (You can use Amazon book preview to see all the topics in the table of contents.)

Unlike many Nolo books, this one does not include a CD (probably because they have a separate will writing software product).