How to Manage Your Estate?

Estate is the overall sum of all of your possessions. All your assets, entitlements, interests or even legal rights are counted under the broader term estate. However, the issue of your estate as a whole usually comes under a closer inspection after you are already gone. Because of this, in order to leave a clean slate behind you, you may want to learn a thing or two about managing your estate the right way.

Listing Your Real Estate

First things first, you need to know exactly what you are dealing with, which mostly means starting with analyzing your estate. This means listing all your properties according to their categories. For example, you need to start by considering all your real-estate assets like commercial properties, residential properties and vacant lots you own. Even here you have numerous sub-categories seeing how residential properties can be separate homes, high value homes, duplexes or residential homes. Needless to say, all of them have different values and would be of different interest to your potential successors.

Moveable Property

Next thing you need to take into consideration are your moveable assets. You see, sometimes your most valuable belongings won’t be real-estate but your jewelry or perhaps clothing collection. Especially when it comes to the jewelry, we could be talking about a real fortune in resale figures. On the other hand, you can never count out the sentimental value as well. In other situations, this will be your furniture, your vehicles or even your pets. In the case of the latter you need to be especially careful since we are talking about living beings that need to be taken care of after you are gone.

Other Assets

Finally, not all the things you own, or owe, exist in the form of an item or a belonging. You see, sometimes you can have a life insurance to a significant sum, so you need to be clear from the start who is entitled to it. Furthermore, you may have a share in a business which can be particularly valuable as an asset. Sometimes a company you invested in may seem like a waste of money, but you never know where they will be in several years or decades. Who knows, you may have the shares in the future Microsoft, Apple or Coca-Cola.

Eventually, not all of your estate is something to look forward to. In some rare cases your decedents will be faced with your debts or unpaid taxes. Needless to say, this should always be settled on time. On a different note, you may even want to think about your digital assets. This is simply because in this day and age you need to think about what will happen to your Facebook and Twitter accounts after you are gone.

Draw a Will

In the end, there are two ways you can go about this. If you fail to make any legal statement about the future of your belongings, there is always the option of the law doing it for you – there is usually a legislative formula per which your estate will be divided between your closest relatives. The easiest way to take control of this procedure is to write a will. A lot of people are put off by the lengthy procedure, but in the 21st century you can look for companies who offer the composition of wills onlineAnother option you can have is to create a transfer on death deed. It is another way to transfer a property without having to go through a probate procedure. 

Conclusion

While contemplating about our passing away is never a pleasant matter, our loved ones would have enough to deal with as it is without having to take care of legislative matters on their own. We should always think about those we are leaving behind, since they will most certainly think about us.