Don’t you need a lot of money before creating an Estate Plan?

Absolutely not. Estate planning helps people in every income bracket.

For instance, take Mary Kathryn. Her brother, Benny, was on the autism spectrum. Their father (the last surviving parent) died without putting together an estate plan. Benny had lived at home with his father; he had no job or connections in the neighborhood because of his disability.

The father had run a small retail business that wasn’t worth much when he died. But he bought his home back in the 1960s, and the property was now worth $1.2 million. Mary Kathryn’s plan was to sell the home and split the proceeds between Benny and Mary Kathryn. But there was a big problem. If Benny inherited these assets, he would become ineligible to collect Social Security Income (SSI) benefits. He needed that money to pay for things like clothes, groceries, medical needs, and so on.

Mary Kathryn fixed the problem by establishing a first party special needs trust to serve as a trustee. Benny would continue to receive SSI (as long as Benny remained alive), and the trust could purchase important things for him, such as a television or trip to the Bahamas.

Of course, had Benny’s father established a special needs trust back when he was alive, Mary Kathryn would not have had to go through this song and dance.

The moral here is: planning is a must-do project, not a “would-like-to-do-if-I-have-the-time-one-day” project.