Tisser Law Group, APC believes that your estate plan must be reviewed periodically in order to ensure that it remains accurate. An estate plan is only as good as your intentions at any given time and, unless reviewed, it may not reflect your wishes as circumstances change. There are likely to be more changes to your estate due to family and personal circumstances than to changes in the law. Unfortunately, we have been involved with too many trusts and estates in which a person has died and the family has incurred unnecessary expenses, taxes, and significant administration complexities, which could have been avoided had a review of the deceased’s estate plan been done prior to his or her death.

Tisser Law Group, APC recommends you review your estate at least every three years.  Contact us if you would like a review of your plan.

When to Revise an Estate Plan?

There are two categories of events that can require changes to your estate plan. The first involves changes in the law. These would include matters that affect the amount you can leave tax free to your family at your death, estate tax planning, techniques to minimize taxes relating to the inheritance of your IRA or retirement accounts, and tax planning techniques resulting from changes in the law. It would also include matters such as updating your durable power of attorney for health care.

The second category would be personal matters such as:

• Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, disabilities, incapacity or changes in your health, or the health of a beneficiary or trustee.
• Changes to your trustees or guardians.
• Changes to your beneficiaries, adding gifts to grandchildren or changing the ages at which beneficiaries will receive their inheritance.
• Amending your estate plan to protect your beneficiaries, so that they do not lose their inheritance to creditors (in lawsuits) or spouses (in divorces).
• A desire to do Advanced Estate Tax Planning.
• A change in your wealth, which could affect the distribution of your assets or your tax planning.
• Receipt of an inheritance which may affect your estate plan.

We recommend you contact Tisser Law Group, APC whenever there is a change in your of your family’s life.  If you are not sure if an event affects your estate plan, contact us to determine whether an amendment to your estate plan would be required or recommended.

Three-Year Review

There are several things that can happen within three years. You can get married, have children, receive a promotion, and more. If your estate plan has not been reviewed or changed after these significant changes in your life, you open yourself and your family to potentially devastating consequences. This is why our Encino estate planning attorney always emphasizes the importance of reviewing your estate plan periodically.

The Three-Year Review program provides you with the opportunity to have your estate plan reviewed by our office once every three years to ensure it is up-to-date after it is signed. This program is offered to you at no charge. If you decide to make any changes to your estate plan at that time, we will quote you a fee for the work. Under this program, we are not responsible for letting you know if the law changes in a way that requires you to amend your estate plan documents, and we will not meet every year.

Protective Estate Planning Review (PEPR)

The PEPR program is designed to provide you with an annual meeting to inform you about how changes in your personal circumstances and in the law affect your estate plan.

This would include a review of the following:

• Your finances
• Your relationships
• Your taxes
• Your insurance
• Other important matters

This program is offered to you for an annual fee. If you decide to make changes to your estate plan at that time, a percentage of the fee will be deducted from the total cost of the changes.