Linda C. Ashar - Your Ohio Wills, Trusts, & Estates Explained Simply: Important Information You Need to Know for Ohio Residents

Your

OHIO

WILLS, TRUSTS, & ESTATES EXPLAINED SIMPLY:

Important Information You Need to Know for Ohio Residents

By Linda C. Ashar, attorney at law

YOUR OHIO WILLS, TRUSTS, & ESTATES EXPLAINED SIMPLY:
IMPORTANT INFORMATION YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR OHIO RESIDENTS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ashar, Linda C., 1947-

Your Ohio wills, trusts, & estates explained simply : important information you need to know for Ohio residents / by Linda C. Ashar.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-416-4 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-60138-416-5 (alk. paper)

1. Estate planning--Ohio. I. Title. II. Title: Your Ohio wills, trusts and estates explained simply.

KFO140.A983 2010

332.02401609771--dc22

2010004090

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DEDICATION

To my family.

INTRODUCTION: Estate Planning: What Is It?

Many estate-planning books ask you to start by taking inventory of everything you will leave behind. When you are trying to plan for the time after your death, it does make a certain amount of sense. The problem is that you could end up with an extremely long list including every single compact disc you own right now, not to mention the entire contents of your junk drawer but to what end? You might have a sense of what matters to you most right now, but what about five months or 50 years from now?

Asking difficult questions and knowing what your priorities are will be the two most important parts of your estate planning. Whether you need a trust, additional life insurance, or a living will depends on what you want, not what a lawyer or an accountant tells you to do. But making those choices can be difficult, so the first three chapters of this book are designed to walk you through the process of figuring out what you want.

Once you have a sense of what is most important, then you have a reason to dig into the details about wills, beneficiaries, taxes, and all that other minutiae to make sure the people and organizations you care about not the courts or state and federal governments benefit from your lifetime of hard work.

In this book, we provide a philosophy and common-sense approach to estate planning to give you a place to start. The first part of the book gives a generalized overview of broadly applicable principles. As you will be reminded from time to time, several aspects of estate planning and provisions for your property at death are controlled by the laws of your state. In Chapter 11, we focus on the specific requirements for Ohio residents.