Goal # 2: Legal Documents

Death is rarely welcome… Unfortunately I’ve experienced a number of untimely deaths already. A few friends passed away in high school and my mother past away a few years ago, only in her 40s. My experiences have taught me that death can happen at any time – there is no guarantee that we will have the opportunity to enjoy old age.

Taking this into consideration, my relatively new marriage status, and a recently purchased property, I have been meaning to drag Mr. Bartender and myself to an Estate Attorney for a while now. I’m happy to say, earlier this week, we did just that!

Through experience with my mother’s estate and after a thorough reading of “Why Wills Won’t Work” (http://whywillswontwork.com/) I knew that I preferred a trust to avoid probate and allow a smooth transition of our assets to our beneficiaries in the case of our deaths. Questions we pondered included:

- Do we have the proper amounts of life insurance, AD&D insurance, and liability coverage for our cars and property?
- What are our current assets?
- Do we want to leave all of our assets to each other should only one of us die? Or do we want to distribute them to other people as well?
- Where do we want our assets to go should both of us die?

I know the process can seem daunting and depressing, but our attorney seems very pleasant and really broke it down very simply. The goal for us was to create a strong legal foundation so that as our assets accumulate through life and our family expands, changes can be made simply and quickly.

If anyone needs a good Estate Attorney in Chicago, I’ll be happy to refer ours.