Our Services
- A.E. Reagan: Life and Legacy Planning offers proactive estate planning services to help prepare for the future and navigate life’s uncertainties. Your estate plan can protect your loved ones and honor your wishes.
- A.E. Reagan helps clients design meaningful legacy plans for life’s expected and unexpected events, including death, incapacity, charitable and business succession planning.
- Many estate planning clients want to avoid the often time consuming and costly probate court process in Florida by having a well-designed plan to efficiently and effectively transfer their assets at death (e.g., homestead property, investment real estate, savings, retirement accounts, family businesses and other business interests).
- Clients also proactively seek peace of mind in case they become permanently or temporarily incapacitated, so that their wishes are known and met by those that they trust most.
- A.E. Reagan routinely helps clients achieve estate planning goals using common planning tools – wills, trusts, deeds, advance medical directives, pre-need guardian declarations and powers of attorney.
- A.E. Reagan also assists business owners and investors in creating business succession planning that fits their goals and particular circumstances using a variety of tools that are tailored to the client, which may include business organizations, operating agreements, irrevocable and revocable trusts, assignments of interest, and buy-sell agreements.
Legacy Planning Services
Trusts
Having a legal advisor who is familiar with various trusts can help you weigh whether a trust is right for your plan and if so, can help design a trust that reflects your values and goals.
Protect your assets and design a plan of distribution according to your wishes.
Trusts can be simple or complex. Even a basic revocable trust can be designed to help you and your loved ones avoid extensive court proceedings in the event of incapacity or death.
Thoughtful analysis, preparation and execution is important to comply with all legal requirements that govern your trust, providing peace of mind and financial security for your beneficiaries.
Trusts can be revocable or irrevocable, and can have a variety of tax implications, depending on how they are designed and implemented.
It is vital that a trust is funded according to its design and intended use.
Wills
A well-drafted will outlines your final wishes and provides instructions for your estate. A will is often a foundational document in estate planning.
Understanding that probate court is not avoided by having a will, an experienced advisor can help analyze your specific goals and design a will-based or trust-based estate plan for your particular wishes.
Medical Directives
Creating clear, concise, directives listing your medical preferences and advocates helps those that are responsible for your treatment understand and respect your wishes, especially when you are unable to advocate for yourself.
There are multiple ways to legally document and communicate these advance directives. Some are very narrow in scope such as a living will, while others are broader in scope such as a health care surrogate, preneed guardian declaration and health care provisions of a durable power of attorney. A legal advisor familiar with applicable laws can help create detailed compliant directives so your wishes are known and enforceable even if you can’t communicate them yourself.
Florida Real Estate Planning
Title and ownership of Florida Real Estate can take many forms. Determining which title and ownership structure best reflects your circumstances and goals, requires more than a one-size-fits all approach.
Ownership of real estate, especially investor real estate, can often involve weighing pros and cons of different titling options.
Having an advisor familiar with the laws that apply to homestead and non-homestead properties can help you analyze various considerations such as: whether the property is a homestead, whether the property is encumbered by a mortgage, whether it is desirable to have the property in a trust or other entity or owned outright by husband and wife tenancy by the entireties, whether a transfer will trigger a reassessment of property taxes, whether a transfer will trigger document stamp taxes and if so, to what extent.
Business Succession Planning
Business succession planning can provide clarity and peace of mind for business owners and their families using a variety of tools that are tailored to the client, which may include business organizations, operating agreements, irrevocable and revocable trusts, assignments of interest, and buy-sell agreements.
If you own a business, you can create a thoughtful and efficient plan for what happens next if you are incapacitated or pass away.
A business succession plan will often be as unique as your business and circumstances. For example, if you have a professional practice such as a medical office in which you are the sole-provider, you may want to create a plan that reflects who is anticipated to care for patients in your absence if you are temporarily injured, and who will have a right of first refusal to purchase your existing practice if you were to suddenly pass away, and who is to receive such payment and how will the payment be funded.
For many families, pets are beloved family-members. If you become incapacitated or pass away while responsible for an animal, having a plan that is clear and enforceable can protect that animal and help your loved ones understand your wishes.
You can look out for your beloved pets by creating a thoughtful plan for their care according to your wishes. Your plan can include pet provisions such as designating financial resources for their care and assigning caretakers.
Many pet owner clients want to know that if tragedy strikes, their pets are set up to receive the love and care they deserve.