An inheritance plan is the plan you will establish for the purpose of transferring wealth from yourself to your spouse and then to your children or others. To craft and establish a proper inheritance plan, we will discuss with you the following issues:

1. We will need a "snapshot" of your current asset status. This will include your estimate of values of your real estate and financial holdings. Your opinion of real estate values need not be perfect. This "snapshot" of financial assets will give us information we need to know to assist you in putting together an appropriate inheritance plan.

2. Will your children carry out your plan? Typically, you will appoint one or more of your children as your successor trustee(s) (your after-death agents). We will want to know if there is a risk that your children may alter or deviate from your inheritance plan.

3. Taking Care of the Surviving Spouse. Typically husbands die first. It is important to talk about who will be in control of the surviving spouse’s wealth in the event of incapacity or incompetence. Are your children the appropriate ones to decide nursing home placement and/or in-home care? We will talk about whether your children are the appropriate ones to deal with the surviving parent’s wealth and making decisions on behalf of an incapacitated or incompetent surviving parent.

4. A primary goal of inheritance planning is to "do no harm" to your children or create enmity among your children. In this regard, We will want to know if you plan to leave your wealth to your children equally, and if so, have there been any lifetime gifts or advances that require equalization.

5. If a child is to be a successor trustee, we will talk about whether we should select all or just some of your children for that important role.

6. We will talk about whether the inheritance share should go outright to your children or into a protection trust. An outright inheritance subjects that wealth to that child’s marital problems, and other risks of life. Allocating an inheritance share to a "protection trust" will preserve that inheritance as that child’s separate property, will keep the inheritance share in the "bloodline", and to some extent reduce or eliminate the estate tax when the inherited share in the hands of a child goes to a grandchild.

7. If you have children of a prior marriage, we must talk about the best way to prevent or minimize "economic conflict" between your second spouse and your children with your first spouse.

8. We will want to know if a child has a physical, emotional, or mental disability. Is a child suffering from any addictions or other problems making it inappropriate to have that child in control of the inherited wealth? Is a child on government entitlements?

9. If your wealth (or you and your spouse's combined wealth) now exceeds $2.OM (eff. 1/1/06) we will talk about what can be done to reduce the federal estate tax. We will talk about what can be done to give more to your children and grandchildren and less to the IRS.

10. Most likely you have an IRA or other retirement benefits. We will review how these benefits "tie in" to your inheritance plan.