Five Essential Steps to Protect Your Loved Ones in 2025

Make 2025 the year you finally tackle estate planning and protect your loved ones’ future. Learn the five essential steps you can take right now to ensure they are cared for, and your legacy is preserved. Read more…


2025.01.19

Five Essential Steps to Protect Your Loved Ones in 2025

Do you ever get that uneasy feeling when you wonder how your loved ones would manage if something happened to you? That persistent voice in the back of your mind, reminding you that you haven’t created a will or trust—or updated the estate plan you already have?

As we enter 2025, it's time to stop pushing those thoughts aside and take action to protect the people you love most. Many people avoid estate planning because they think it will be complicated, expensive, too time-consuming, or emotionally challenging. But the truth is, not having a plan, or having an out-of-date plan, is far more costly – financially,  emotionally, and time-wise – for the people you love. 

Let's take a look at five things you can do right now to create lasting peace of mind.


Step 1: Get Financially Organized

One of the biggest challenges people face after losing a loved one is trying to piece together their financial life. Where are all the accounts? What insurance policies exist? What bills need to be paid? Without proper organization, your family could spend months or even years trying to track everything down. Worse yet, anything they don’t find will be turned over to the State Department of Unclaimed Property, where there are approximately $60 billion in lost assets nationwide.  

Financial organization goes beyond simply making lists—it's about creating a clear and accessible roadmap for the people who will manage your affairs if you’re unable to. This means documenting your accounts, insurance policies, important passwords, and key contacts in an organized and up-to-date manner. When your loved ones need this information, it should be easy to find and straightforward. That’s why our Legacy Planning process starts with financial organization. Our ongoing Legacy Planning service helps you maintain this organization throughout your life, ensuring everything is as simple as possible for your loved ones when the time comes


Step 2: Create a Lasting Message for Your Loved Ones

When someone dies, their loved ones often wish they had one more conversation, one more chance to hear their loved one's voice or read their words. That's why recording a Legacy Interview is part of our planning process. It’s truly one of the most meaningful gifts you can give the people you love, and who love you. 

This message isn't just about saying goodbye – it's about sharing your values, hopes, and life lessons. Think about what you want future generations to know about your life journey. 

What wisdom do you want to pass down? 

What family stories, or even recipes, should be preserved? 

While you may think “generational wealth” is just about money, the truth is that people who can learn from the recorded history of past generations have true generational wealth that’s far greater and irreplaceable than any dollar ever could be.

Your words will become a treasured part of your legacy, offering comfort and guidance long after you're gone.


Step 3: Learn About Tax Planning

Many people don't realize that proper estate planning can help minimize or eliminate taxes their loved ones might otherwise have to pay. Without planning, they could lose a significant portion of their inheritance to estate taxes, income taxes, or capital gains taxes. 

Strategic tax planning isn't about avoiding your obligations – it's about ensuring more of your hard-earned assets go to the people you love rather than the government. Working with a trusted advisor who understands both estate and tax law can help you identify opportunities to protect your loved ones’ financial future.


Step 4: Plan Your Final Farewell (and Your Last Days)

Although thinking about your own funeral may feel uncomfortable, planning and paying for it in advance is one of the most caring gestures you can offer your loved ones. After you're gone, they will be grieving, and the last thing they need is the burden of making tough decisions about your funeral, uncertain of your wishes.

By planning ahead, you not only ensure your wishes are honored but you also protect the people you love from emotional overspending during a vulnerable time. You can choose and pay for exactly what you want, locking in today's prices and relieving your loved ones of this financial burden.

Even more importantly, take time to consider how you want to spend your final years, months, or days, and discuss your preferences with those who will be responsible for your care. If starting this conversation feels overwhelming or you find yourself postponing it, we’re here to help facilitate the discussion. Having this brave conversation now is one of the most meaningful gifts you can offer to the people you love.


Step 5: Create a Comprehensive Legacy Plan

All these components come together in our comprehensive Legacy Planning process, which helps you navigate the law as it pertains to your specific situation, taking into account your family dynamic and assets. This enables you to make informed decisions that will keep your loved ones out of court and conflict when the unexpected occurs. It’s not merely about drafting legal documents – it’s about creating a sustainable plan, keeping it updated, and ensuring your family knows whom to reach out to in times of need.

When you develop a Legacy Plan with us, it encompasses clear guidance on asset distribution, responsibility assignments, and crucially, how to locate and access everything when required. It also details your wishes if you become incapacitated. Furthermore, you can specify your memorial service preferences, and we will assist you in recording a Legacy Interview that your loved ones will treasure for a lifetime.

Starting the new year is an ideal opportunity to take these critical steps to safeguard your loved ones. Don’t delay until it’s too late – the best gift you can give your family is the gift of preparation and peace of mind.


How We Help You Get Started

At Adams Law Office, LLC, we are dedicated to helping you establish vital safeguards. Our Legacy Planning process is designed to assist you in crafting a meaningful legacy for your family. We focus on smart tax strategies, organizing your financial affairs, planning your final arrangements, and developing a thorough plan to keep your loved ones out of court and disputes. Most importantly, we'll empower you to make informed choices that reflect your values and desires. Don't wait any longer! Start the new year by taking the right steps for your loved ones with our assistance

Call us today to learn more and get stated with your Legacy Planning

Beyond The Holidays

While passing down family recipes, reliving memories of holidays past, and gathering around to decorate the tree are cherished traditions. These moments also present a perfect opportunity to discuss, preserve, and protect your family's broader legacy. Here’s how. Read more…


2024.12.15

Beyond the Festivities: How The Holidays Can Inspire Your Family Legacy Planning

As Thanksgiving passes and Christmas approaches, many families are busy planning menus, coordinating travel, and preparing for extended time together. While the turkey, stuffing, and gift wrapping and giving are important (and delicious) traditions, this cherished holiday season offers something even more valuable—a perfect opportunity to think about, discuss, and preserve your family's legacy. 

In this article, you'll discover realistic ways to capture family stories during your holiday gathering, learn how to start meaningful legacy conversations without awkwardness, and understand how to transform these precious moments into a comprehensive Legacy Plan that protects your family's values and assets for generations to come. This year, consider using your holiday gathering as a springboard for the meaningful conversations that can shape your family's future.


The Heart of Legacy Planning: More Than Just Money

When most people think about legacy planning, they often focus solely on financial assets. But true legacy planning is so much more. It's about preserving your family's stories, values, traditions, and the wisdom gained through generations. After working with families to support them with their estate planning and being there at the end of life, I’ve learned that these are the things that matter most. While financial assets do matter values, insights, lessons, stories, and experiences, plus sentimental items, are almost always more important to families than financial assets.

Those moments around the dinner table or sitting in the family room sharing old family recipes, telling stories about loved ones passed, or discussing what matters most to your family, are the building blocks of a meaningful legacy. The warmth and light of the holidays, with their focus on gratitude and family togetherness, provide an ideal setting to explore these deeper aspects of your legacy. 


Using Holiday Gatherings to Plan for the Future

With a little planning, Christmas can be a great time to discuss the future. These conversations don't have to be formal or heavy—they can emerge naturally from your holiday interactions:

Talk About Family Values: When expressing gratitude, encourage family members to share what they value most about being part of the family. These discussions can help inform how you structure your estate plan to reflect and perpetuate these values.

Discuss Family Philanthropy: If giving back is important to your family, use this time to talk about causes that matter to everyone. This can lead to meaningful discussions about charitable giving and how to incorporate it into your legacy plan.

Address Family Dynamics: Holiday gatherings often reveal family dynamics that should be considered in your estate planning. Who are the peacemakers? Who might need additional support? Understanding these dynamics can help you create a plan that promotes family harmony rather than conflict.

Bring Up Your Own Planning: If you’ve recently completed your own estate planning process, or plan to before the end of the year, or early next year, this is a great time to bring up your plans. Consider saying: “Because I want to make sure that everything is as easy as it can be for you all if something happens to me, I’m doing/did a kind of estate planning called Legacy Planning, and I’d love to share about it with you because you’ll all be impacted. Are you open to having a conversation about that, and what we all want to happen for ourselves if we become incapacitated or when we die?”

Understanding your family's values, philanthropic interests, and dynamics isn't just about having nice conversations—it's about gathering essential information that will help you create a Legacy Plan that truly serves your family and preserves harmony for generations to come. Passing


Making Legacy Planning Part of Your Holiday Tradition

The key to successful legacy planning is making it an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Consider establishing new holiday traditions that support this goal. Here are a few ideas:

Create a Family Time Capsule: Each year, have family members contribute something meaningful to a time capsule—letters, photos, or small items that represent the year's important moments.

Start a Family Mission Statement: Work together to create and update a family mission statement that reflects your shared values and goals. This can guide both current decisions and future legacy planning.

Document Family Medical History: While families are together, take time to update your family medical history. This information is critical for future generations and can inform healthcare decisions.

Remember that legacy planning isn't a one-time task but a continuous journey that can be woven into your family's holiday traditions each year. By incorporating these intentional practices into every holiday gathering, you create a natural way to capture and preserve what matters most while building a stronger foundation for your family's future.


How We Help You Create a Lasting Legacy

While holiday conversations are valuable for legacy planning, they're just the beginning. To truly protect your family's legacy and ensure your wishes are carried out, you need professional guidance and support to create a comprehensive Legacy Plan. Our Legacy Planning process goes beyond traditional estate planning to capture not just your assets, but your values, wisdom, and family story. At Adams Law Office, LLC we help ensure that the conversations you have in the family room this holiday season become part of a lasting legacy that benefits generations to come.

The Benefits of a Trust

There are numerous benefits of creating a trust as your primary estate planning tool. Different kinds of trusts can help you avoid probate, reduce estate taxes, or set up long-term property management for you and your family, including family members who are minors or have special needs.

A revocable living trust (“RLT”) is a separate entity created for holding title to property for the benefit of a beneficiary. A revocable living trust is just that – revocable and changeable by the person who created it. A “living trust” (also called an “inter vivos” trust) is simply a trust you create while you’re alive, rather than one that is created at your death.

With a revocable living trust, you, the property owner are the Settlor, who creates and can amend the trust, the original Trustee, who manages and distributes the property held in trust, and the beneficiary until death, at which time, a Successor Trustee transfers the property to the successor beneficiaries. Control over the property remains with the owner(s) during life and the transfer of property after death occurs without probate.

One of the primary advantages of creating a living trust is that property left through the trust does not have to go through probate. In a nutshell, probate is the court-supervised process of paying your debts and distributing your property to the people who inherit it. The average probate takes 7-12 months before distributions are made. Property you transfer into a living trust before your death does not go through probate. If you have property in more than one state, a trust can eliminate the need for probate proceedings in multiple jurisdictions. The successor trustee — the person you appoint to handle the trust after your death — simply transfers ownership to the beneficiaries you named in the trust according to how you stated in the trust agreement. In many cases, the whole process takes only a few weeks. When all of the property has been transferred to the beneficiaries, the living trust ceases to exist.

A simple probate-avoidance living trust has no effect on taxes. More complicated living trusts, however, can greatly reduce the federal and/or state estate tax bills for people who own assets above the estate tax exemption. If your estate, including life insurance, is sizable and over the estate tax exemption amount ($3,000,000 for the Maryland estate tax and $5,490,000 for the 2017 federal estate tax), a credit shelter trust can save your beneficiaries tens of thousands of dollars in estate taxes. This specific tax-saving trust is designed primarily for married couples. It is also commonly called an “AB trust,” an “exemption trust,” a “marital life estate trust,” or a “marital bypass trust.” Each spouse leaves property, in trust, to the other for life, and then to the children or other beneficiaries.

Another benefit of a trust is that it is a private document. A will becomes a matter of public record when it is submitted to a probate court, as do all the other documents associated with probate — inventories of the deceased person’s assets and debts, for example. The terms of a living trust, however, need not be made public.

Some other benefits of trusts are that a trust can allow for great specificity with regard to distributions for beneficiaries, asset protection, retirement plan distribution planning to limit income taxes, provisions for special needs children, blended family planning, and provisions to prevent guardianship.

Why Everyone Needs an Estate Plan

The primary reason that everyone needs an estate plan is that if you fail to create a plan, the State will create one for you. The State legislature does not know anything about your family dynamics and the things that you value, so why leave such important decisions to them? If you are a parent, you should be the person deciding who will take care of your children if something happens to you? You should also be the person to decide who gets your assets after you are gone and to decide when and how they should be distributed?

Without a will, state laws of “intestate succession” kick in. In Maryland*, the following distributions would apply if you died without a will:

If the intestate laws do not precisely reflect your wishes, a will and/or a revocable living trust is necessary.

*See MD Code Ann., Estates and Trusts §§ 3–101 et seq. (2003) for a complete description of intestate distributions.

Another reason that everyone needs an estate plan is that a well planned estate is a valuable gift to your loved ones at a time when they will be least able to make important decisions. If you have ever had to suffer through the loss of a loved one, this is all too true for you. Your family should be able to focus on honoring your memory rather than figuring out how to pay bills when the bank will no longer allow access to accounts, or deciding who gets what assets.

A well planned estate also has the following benefits: