Keith Dorney - The Bus List—Essential Estate Planning: Including Wills, Trusts, Durable Powers, Beneficiary Deeds, TODs and PODs, Plus Organizing and Securing Your Records

Hopefully youll live a long, healthy life and have plenty of time for planning your final arrangements, transferring assets, and fulfilling any last wishes. But what if you get hit by a bus? Even if you dont get hit by a bus, your time will eventually come. Its the one common denominator among all living things.

Thats why you need a Bus List. Your Bus List makes it easier on your loved ones during a time of great sorrow and grieving. Compiling your Bus List is one of the kindest, most thoughtful gifts you can bestow on your surviving loved ones. Be sure and make it your last, best gift.

Through the years, Ive learned many folks avoid doing any meaningful estate planning because of brain cramps. Thats the term an old coach of mine coined for being so overwhelmed by information you do nothing.

In football, a brain cramp resulted in you standing there looking stupid as the play unfolded around you. With estate planning, a brain cramp could result in consequences much more serious. Money may be needlessly wasted. Assets could go where you dont want them to go. Your last wishes may not be fulfilled.

The subject of estate planning is broad and at times complicated. The fact that every state has their own set of rules makes things even more confusing. Then there are those confounded legal terms you have to slog through. Its enough to give anyone a brain cramp.

As I guide you through the process of writing your own Bus List, Ill introduce you to the options available. Some solutions are easy to set up and execute, others are more complicated and costly.

Choose the options that work best for you now. You can always change to a more elaborate plan later.

These decisions and actions on your part ultimately will be wasted if there is poor communication between you and your beneficiaries. Upon your passing, they need look no further than your Bus List. All the needed information is right there in one place.

To help you decide which actions to choose, youll find a list of Next Steps after each section. Complete each applicable next step, execute any necessary documents, and move on to the next section. There are only three sections. Youll have your Bus List written in no time!

After completing all three sections of Part I Body, Brains, and Bling you can rest assured youve got the big stuff covered.

Section 1 - Body - Detail any last requests, including arrangements.

Section 2 - Brains - Appoint individuals to represent you.

Section 3 - Bling - Assure your most valued assets pass seamlessly and inexpensively to your beneficiaries.

Part II covers other important estate planning topics:

- Location of Your Bus List

- Estate Liquidity

- Federal Estate and Gift Tax

- State Estate, Gift, and Inheritance Tax

- Community Property vs Common Law States

- Should I Hire an Attorney?

As far as confusing legal terms go, I apologize in advance for using some of them, but there is no getting around it. To help, Ive compiled a comprehensive of those nasty words, where youll find easy-to-understand and at times humorous definitions that will add to your breadth of understanding. Youll find it way more useful than your reading devices dictionary.

Estate planning is best done when there is no urgency. If you wait until it is urgent, youve waited too long. Get started on your Bus List now. Dont procrastinate any longer. You can complete the Body section in the next few minutes and be one third of the way through!

Part I: Writing Your Bus List