Estate Planning

Providing for Incapacity

If you become incapacitated, you will not be able to manage your own financial affairs. Many people mistakenly believe that a spouse or adult child can automatically step in for them. In New York, that is not the case. Without the proper legal documents in place, a family member must petition a court to have you declared legally incompetent before they can act on your behalf. That process is lengthy, costly, and stressful, and the person appointed may be required to return to court annually to account for every financial decision they make.

A durable power of attorney solves this. It designates a person you trust to withdraw money from your accounts, pay bills, manage investments, and handle your financial affairs immediately, without court involvement. For healthcare, a healthcare proxy designates someone to make medical decisions on your behalf if you lose the ability to do so. A living will informs your doctors and family of your wishes regarding extraordinary measures and end-of-life care. These three documents work together to ensure that you, not a court, remain in control of what happens to you.

Avoiding Probate

If you leave your estate to your loved ones through a will alone, everything you own must pass through probate before it can be distributed. Probate is a court-supervised process that is expensive, time-consuming, and open to the public. It is not unusual for probate courts to freeze assets for weeks or months while determining the proper disposition of the estate. A surviving spouse may be forced to apply to the court for access to funds simply to pay living expenses.

With a properly structured estate plan, your assets can pass to your loved ones without going through probate at all. A revocable living trust, combined with correct beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance, allows your estate to transfer quickly, privately, and at minimal cost. I help clients structure their plans so that probate is avoided entirely where possible, and minimized where it cannot be avoided.

Wills and Trusts: What They Actually Do

Most people think of a will as the document that decides who gets what when they die. That is one of its functions, but a well-drafted will does considerably more. It names a guardian for minor children, appoints an executor to carry out your wishes and manage the estate through probate, establishes trusts for beneficiaries who should not receive assets outright, and can record funeral and burial wishes. Without a will, each of these decisions falls to a court.

A revocable living trust works alongside a will but accomplishes things a will cannot. Because a trust does not pass through probate, assets held in it transfer to your beneficiaries immediately and privately after your death. A trust is also significantly harder to challenge than a will, and is particularly useful if you own real estate in more than one state, since each state would otherwise require its own separate probate proceeding.

Trusts also protect what you leave behind. An inheritance distributed outright to an adult child is immediately exposed to that child's creditors, a divorcing spouse, or poor financial decisions. Assets held in trust can be distributed on a schedule, or managed by a trustee with discretion over distributions, providing a layer of protection that an outright inheritance cannot.

Trust Structures for Different Needs

Trusts are not only for large estates. They are flexible legal tools that can be tailored to virtually any family situation or planning goal. Some of the most commonly used structures include:

• Revocable Living Trusts — Hold your assets during your lifetime with full control retained. At death, assets transfer directly to beneficiaries without probate. Can be amended or revoked at any time.
• Trusts for Minors — Hold a child's inheritance until a specified age or milestone, managed by a trustee you choose. Prevents an 18-year-old from receiving a large sum without the maturity to handle it.
• Marital Trusts — Allow a surviving spouse to benefit from assets during their lifetime while ensuring those assets ultimately pass to your children from a prior marriage or other intended beneficiaries.
• Spendthrift Trusts — Protect a beneficiary from their own financial decisions and from creditors by giving an independent trustee full discretion over distributions.
• Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts — Irrevocable trusts that preserve assets from the cost of long-term care while allowing a meaningful degree of control. Must be established well before a Medicaid application. See the Elder Law & Medicaid Planning page for details.
• Special Needs Trusts — Hold assets for a beneficiary with a disability without disqualifying them from SSI, Medicaid, or other government benefits. The trust supplements rather than replaces public support. See the Special Needs Planning page for details.

Providing for Minor Children

If you have minor children, your estate plan must address who will raise them and who will manage their inheritance if you are no longer able to do so. A will is the only document that allows you to nominate a guardian for your children. Without one, that decision belongs entirely to a court.

Planning for children involves more than naming a guardian. A properly structured trust can protect a child's inheritance from being distributed at age 18, specify how and when funds are released, and provide for children with special needs without disqualifying them from government benefits. For a full discussion of planning strategies for families with children, see the dedicated Planning for Children page.

Estate Tax Planning

Whether your estate will owe taxes depends on its size and how your plan is structured. The federal estate tax threshold is $15 million in 2026, but New York has its own estate tax with a threshold of $7,350,000 and a tax cliff, meaning that if your estate exceeds this threshold, the entire estate is taxed from the first dollar, not just the amount above the limit. The difference between a well-structured plan and no plan at all can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A common and costly mistake for married couples is leaving everything outright to the surviving spouse. While assets pass to a spouse free of estate tax, the survivor then holds the entire combined estate alone. If that combined estate exceeds $7,350,000, only one New York exemption remains at the second death rather than two. A properly structured plan can double the amount that passes tax-free to children or other beneficiaries, often without any significant sacrifice of flexibility for the surviving spouse.

For clients with larger estates or multi-generational goals, advanced strategies including irrevocable trusts, family limited partnerships, and generation-skipping trusts can reduce or eliminate this exposure. See the Advanced Estate Planning page for a full discussion.

Charitable Bequests and Planned Giving

If you want to benefit a charitable organization or cause, your estate plan can provide for it during your lifetime or at your death. Options range from a simple bequest in your will to more sophisticated structures such as Charitable Remainder Trusts, donor-advised funds, and private foundations.

Depending on how your plan is structured, charitable giving can also generate an income tax deduction, reduce capital gains taxes on appreciated assets, and lower your estate tax exposure. I work with your financial advisors and CPAs to integrate charitable giving into a comprehensive plan that reflects both your financial and personal goals.