Okay, so you worked your tail off and now you have accumulated some net worth (hopefully) to prove it. Or maybe you are still working your tail off and you want to plan for the ongoing growth and preservation of your assets.
You don’t have to be a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet to have an estate that would benefit from some planning. And trust us, good estate planning is the only way to keep your assets from being shared with everyone who shouldn’t have a right to any of it.
You would be surprised to learn how insensitive State government is to your plans if you haven’t formally declared them. A lack of careful planning could cause your spouse to lose out on important assets that are necessary to live on. For example, in the State of Missouri if you die without a formal estate plan and have children and a surviving spouse, your surviving spouse inherits the first $20,000 of your intestate property, plus only 1/2 of the balance.
To learn more about how your assets will be distributed without an estate plan in Missouri, click here. In the State of Indiana, things are a little different. To see how Indiana handles this, click here.
Estate planning is governed by probate law, which is different in every State. For a good resource guide on probate law in Missouri, you should look at this.