Estate Planning

Planning for the future means considering it before it occurs.

Estate planning can help you preserve assets, manage money during your lifetime, and facilitate the administration of your affairs after death. Proper estate planning ensures that assets are distributed according to your wishes and not the state's. You can choose an executor whom you trust and who knows your wishes, your family's, and the contents of your estate. It can also help minimize estate taxes and court costs.

Many individuals believe a will is a sufficient means of estate planning. Having a will is a great first step, but it may be legally insufficient to facilitate the attainment of your estate planning goals and objectives.

Estate planning can help with assisting children. Some ways to help children through estate planning are by setting up gifting strategies, or creating a trust.

One way to avoid or lessen Federal estate taxes is to leave your assets, or at least some portion of your assets to charity. If all wealth is beyond the exemption amount is left to charity, there is no Federal estate tax due. But, there is another option you might want to consider. Estate planning is one of the few situation in life in which you can give something away and keep it too. This can be accomplished by combining charitable giving with a wealth replacement life insurance trust.

At Canella Financial Group in Pittsburgh, we work with estate planning attorneys with respect to these key areas: