Where to Start, Estate Planning in Georgia

Nothing in place yet? Which document a Georgia family should sign first, what each one does, and an honest look at cost. Plain language, no pressure.  

 

If you have nothing in place, you do not need a finished estate plan this month. You need one document, and it is probably not the one you were thinking of.

 

What is Estate Planning Awareness Month, and does it mean anything in Georgia?

 

October is Estate Planning Awareness Month, a designation Congress adopted to encourage people to put their affairs in order. On its own it changes nothing. What makes it useful is that it gives a lot of Georgia families the same deadline at the same time.

 

This article is general information about estate planning in Georgia, not legal advice, and the right answer for your family depends on your own facts and on current Georgia law. What it will do is give you an order of operations. If you have nothing in place, you do not need to finish a plan this month. You need to sign one document, and the rest gets easier after that.

If I have nothing in place, which document should I sign first?

 

For most Georgia families, the first document is a financial power of attorney. Not a will.

 

A financial power of attorney names a person who can act for you on money and paperwork: paying bills, dealing with a bank, handling an insurance claim, selling or refinancing a house if that becomes necessary. It comes first because it works while you are alive. A will does nothing until after death, so it cannot help a family whose parent is in the hospital or who can no longer sign their own name.

 

The hardest situations we see in our Cobb and Cherokee County offices are almost never about a missing will. They are about a family with no power of attorney and someone who can no longer sign. The options then narrow to asking a probate court to appoint a conservator, which takes time, costs money, and involves a court that did not need to be involved.

 

If you do one thing in October, do this one. Estate planning in Georgia starts here, and our Woodstock, Kennesaw and Powers Ferry offices can tell you what it involves in a single conversation.

 

What does an advance directive for health care actually control?

 

The second document is the advance directive for health care. In Georgia this is one document that does two jobs: it names a health care agent who can make medical decisions if you cannot, and it records what you would want.

 

Two practical points get left out of most explanations. The first is that naming a backup matters, because the person you name first may be unreachable or too close to the situation to decide. The second is that a hospital cannot follow a directive it has never seen.

 

So when you sign one, do three small things the same week. Give a copy to the person you named. Give a copy to your primary care practice so it sits in your chart. Tell one other family member where the original is. Twenty minutes, and it is the difference between a document that works and one that exists.

 

Where does a will fit, and why is it not first?

 

A will says who receives what after you die and who is in charge of carrying that out. Nearly every Georgia family should have one. It is third on this list because it speaks only after death, so it solves none of the problems that come up while you are still here.

 

A will also decides who is in charge. Naming the right executor, and an alternate, prevents a large share of the family conflict we see in probate. If your estate goes through probate in Cobb County, that filing happens at the Cobb County Probate Court in Marietta, and the person you named has to do it.

 

If you are in Fulton, Cobb or Cherokee County and you have been meaning to write a will for years, it is worth knowing that it is usually the shortest part of the process, not the longest.

 

Will my retirement account follow my will?

 

Usually not, and this is the quiet one. Retirement accounts and life insurance policies generally pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form the company has on file, and that form is not controlled by your will. If it still names an ex spouse, or a parent who has since died, that is what governs.

 

This is the most common way a thoughtful estate plan gets undone in practice, and it is also the easiest thing on this list to fix. You do not need a lawyer to look at it. Log in to each retirement account and each life insurance policy this week and read the beneficiary line.

 

If what you find there does not match what you want, that is worth raising when you sit down with an estate planning attorney in Georgia, because the fix sometimes affects how the rest of the plan should be written.

 

Do I need a trust in Georgia, or is a will enough?

 

The advice circulating online is that trusts are only worth it above some large net worth. That is not how we would put it. A revocable living trust is a tool for a specific set of problems, and the question is whether you have one of them.

 

A trust usually earns its cost in three situations. You own real estate in more than one state, which otherwise means a probate in each. You want what you own and who receives it kept out of a public court file. Or someone who will inherit cannot manage money themselves, whether because they are young, because of a disability, or because of a benefits program you do not want to disrupt.

 

A married couple in Fulton or Cobb County with one house and two adult children often has none of those problems. For them, a well drafted will, a power of attorney, an advance directive and correct beneficiary designations do the job. We will tell you that rather than selling you the more expensive document.

 

What does an estate plan cost in Georgia?

 

Published figures from Georgia firms put a will based plan in the hundreds range and a revocable living trust meaningfully higher. One Fulton County discussion this year put a trust between four and eight thousand dollars, with property in more than one state pushing toward the top of that range. Those are other firms' numbers, not ours, and we cite them because the absence of any number is what drives people to guess.

 

The range is wide because it is not the same job twice. What moves it is how many properties are involved, whether a business is in the picture, and whether anyone needs long term care or Medicaid planning alongside the documents.

 

This is the question a reader in Cherokee County asked publicly this year, alongside whether an online form would be good enough instead. Both halves of that question deserve a straight answer, and any Georgia firm should be willing to tell you what your own work would cost before you commit to it.

 

Can I just do this online instead?

 

Sometimes, and it is worth being honest about that. Plenty of simple documents produced online have worked exactly as intended. The forms are usually not the problem.

 

What the online route does not give you is three things. It does not check that the document was signed and witnessed the way Georgia law requires, and an execution error can stay invisible until the document is needed. It does not look at how your assets are titled, which is where the beneficiary form problem lives. And it does not know your family, so it cannot tell you that naming two children as co agents may cause trouble if they do not get along.

 

If your situation is genuinely simple and money is tight, a basic document done carefully is better than nothing at all. If there is a blended family, a business, property in two states, or a parent whose health is changing, that is the point at which a conversation with an estate planning attorney in Georgia is worth what it costs.

 

What happens at a first estate planning meeting?

 

A first meeting is a conversation, not a signing. You describe your family and what you own, we tell you which documents fit and which you do not need, and you leave knowing what the work involves and what it would cost.

 

If you want to come in prepared, bring three things: a rough list of what you own and roughly what it is worth, the names of the people you would want making decisions for you, and the beneficiary designations you looked up in the section above.

 

Perigon Legal Services handles estate planning, probate and real estate closings for families in Cherokee, Cobb and Fulton County, from offices in Woodstock, Kennesaw and Atlanta on Powers Ferry Road. If October is the month you finally deal with this, start with one document and let the rest follow.

 

Closing

 

If you have nothing in place, the next step is small. Call the office nearest you, Woodstock for Cherokee County, Kennesaw for Cobb County, or Atlanta on Powers Ferry Road for Fulton and south Cobb, and ask what a first estate planning conversation involves. It is a consultation, not a commitment, and this month is as good a reason as any.