Estate Planning in Clark County

Let Our Springfield Estate Planning Attorney Protect Your Rights & Future

A well-crafted estate plan may help define your wishes when you pass away, preserve family wealth, minimize tax consequences, and avoid drawn-out and costly probate disputes. Our Springfield estate planning attorney at Bridges, Jillisky, Weller & Gullifer, LLC offers a wide variety of legal strategies to help people protect their rights and future.

While we specialize in preparing individual estate plans throughout Clark County, we also represent the beneficiaries, executors, and administrators of an estate. Our legal team works closely with our clients in order to better understand their goals and concerns, and ensure everything is covered.

Estate Planning Options

Estate planning is the best way to ensure your assets and property are divided and dispersed according to your wishes. In Ohio, one’s estate is inherited by beneficiaries (often spouse, children, other family members, and close friends) according to the details of the estate plan.

Our firm’s estate planning services include the following:

• Wills – Addresses who shall inherit your estate upon your death
• Health care directives – Determines your medical preferences and direction if you lose the ability to communicate
• Revocable and irrevocable trusts – Further protects assets from taxes, litigation, and probate
• Durable powers of attorney – Appoints a trusted individual to manage business and personal affairs
• Asset protection – Shields family wealth from creditors and other predatory institutions

Our Springfield estate planning attorney will thoroughly assess your financial standing, find tax advantages which may apply, and design strategies that are personalized to fulfill your needs and desires.

Legal Representation in Probate

Probate entails the transfer of an estate once someone dies through the court. With a will, the executor generally oversees the probate process. Without one, an administrator is appointed by the court.

Probate cases can last between nine months and two years, depending on the details of the estate plan and the number of assets subject to distribution. If a decedent’s estate is small enough, the law allows the estate to be probated through a simplified process called “release from administration” or “summary release from probate.”