Wills, Trusts, and Estate Planning

A good estate plan spares your family confusion and cost at the hardest possible time. The firm prepares complete North Carolina estate plans on a flat fee, so you know the price before the work begins. Every plan is drafted personally by Paul Scott Lipof and tailored to your family, your property, and your wishes, for clients in Clay, Cherokee, Macon, and Graham counties.

What a plan includes

1. Last will and testament — naming your executor, directing how your property passes, and, where minor children are involved, nominating a guardian.
2. Revocable living trust — created and funded to keep your estate out of probate, manage assets if you become incapacitated, and pass property privately to your beneficiaries.
3. Trust funding — the often-missed step of retitling real estate and accounts into the trust so the trust actually works as intended.
4. Durable power of attorney — appointing someone to manage your finances if you cannot, under North Carolina’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act.
5. Health care power of attorney and advance directive — naming your health care agent and recording your end-of-life wishes.
6. HIPAA authorization — letting the people you trust speak with your providers.

Wills or a trust — which is right

A straightforward estate is well served by a will. A revocable trust earns its keep when you own real estate in more than one state, want to avoid probate, value privacy, or want a plan for incapacity. The firm will explain the trade-offs in plain terms and recommend the plan suited to your family — not the most expensive one.

Trust creation and ongoing work

Beyond the core plan, the firm creates and administers revocable and irrevocable trusts, prepares assignments and deeds to fund them, and helps successor trustees carry out their duties. If a trust later becomes contested, the firm also handles trust litigation — see Estate and Trust Litigation.

Dying without a will in North Carolina

Without a will, the Intestate Succession Act decides who inherits, and the result surprises most people. A surviving spouse does not automatically take everything: where there are children, the spouse shares the real property with them, and takes only a portion of the personal property. Where there is no spouse and no children, the estate climbs to parents, then siblings, then more distant kin. Stepchildren never raised as legal children take nothing. An unmarried partner takes nothing.

The property then passes to a group of co-owners who may not agree on whether to sell — a common and expensive origin of mountain land disputes. A will costs a small fraction of the later untangling.

Planning for incapacity

Most families encounter incapacity before they encounter death, and it is the part of a plan people most often skip. A durable power of attorney and a health care power of attorney signed while a person still has capacity are what keep a family out of court. Without them, the only route to managing a parent’s affairs is a guardianship proceeding — a public court process requiring a determination of incompetence, an appointed guardian ad litem, and ongoing annual accountings.

The firm handles those proceedings when they are needed — see guardianships and the guide to guardianship in North Carolina — but signing two documents in advance is dramatically cheaper and less intrusive than any of it.

Keeping the plan current

An estate plan is a snapshot of a family at one moment. It should be revisited after a marriage or divorce, a death among the people named, a birth, a significant change in assets, a move to or from another state, or the purchase or sale of real property. Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance pass outside the will entirely and are the single most commonly overlooked item in an otherwise sound plan.

For Florida and Georgia families

Many clients own a mountain home here and a primary residence in Florida or Georgia. The firm coordinates North Carolina documents with an out-of-state plan and prepares the deeds needed to bring the mountain property into your trust.

Property held this way is the usual reason a family faces two probates in two states. Bringing the North Carolina parcel into a funded revocable trust, or holding it in a form passing outside the estate, avoids the ancillary administration otherwise required here on top of the estate at home.

Planning to reduce a future contest

Where a plan treats children unequally, leaves someone out, or is signed by a person in declining health, it is worth building the record at the time of signing rather than leaving the question open. Documented capacity, careful execution formalities, and a clear statement of reasoning make a later challenge substantially harder to sustain. The guide to contesting a will in North Carolina explains what such a challenge involves and what it costs a family.