Why CLA Estate Services Educates Seniors About Estate Planning

Every day, tens of thousands of Americans find themselves dealing with something they never expected to have to deal with - the probating of an estate. For some, probate may be a minor issue and be resolved relatively quickly and inexpensively. For some, it can become a time consuming and expensive proposition. For the latter group, they wish they could have avoided probate altogether by taking advantage of CLA financial services.

The forms, intricacies and cost associated with probate can become overwhelming to some. Many elect to engage attorneys to help them through the process. But this only adds to the cost. What many people don’t realize is that probate can be avoided if they had properly planned ahead. Knowledge is power and at CLA Estate Services, a Frisco, Texas based company, we provide our clients the knowledge necessary so that people can make informed decisions regarding their estate plan.

At CLA Estate Services, we are not attorneys and cannot give legal advice or create any legal documents for our clients, but what we can do is educate our clients about the different estate planning tools available. We provide information so that a person can better understand their options when they discuss their needs with their attorney.

Why Avoiding Probate is Preferable

When a person dies without a Last Will and Testament or any other type of estate plan in place to direct how their assets should be distributed, the state usually directs that the estate go through the probate process. This is known as “dying intestate”. Nearly every state has specific intestate laws about who inherits what part of an estate when the decedent hasn't specified how he wishes his assets to be distributed. Probate can tie up an estate for months – many times as much as a year or two - during which time your loved ones may not have access to accounts and money that they may need to deal with expenses that arise. In addition, if a lawyer is engaged to handle the probate, his fees are paid out of the estate.

Those people who do have a Last Will and Testament will also not avoid probate. While a Will is better than dying intestate as you can control the distribution of your assets, it must be probated before it can be put into effect. So the same issues of probate arise whether or not you have a Will in place. The probate judge still has to approve the will and appoint the executor that you have named. It also allows an avenue for people to contest the validity of the Will. If contested, the person presenting the Will has to prove that the person was competent and executed the Will under his or her own free will.

Whether someone dies intestate or with a Will, probate will be necessary. The time and costs involved can make it a very stressful time for your loved ones. And in many cases, an attorney is engaged to assist the family. Two of the biggest uncertainties in estate planning are how long probate is going to take and how much it is going to cost.

Avoiding Probate Is Just One Reason for Seniors Estate Planning

CLA Estate Services’ educational seminars are designed to help seniors understand these realities and consider options that may help them avoid probate by using asset financial advice. However, probate is only one of the things involved when talking about estate planning. Seniors who attend seminars offered by CLA Estate Services also learn about other issues that can affect your estate planning, like guardianship, and the options available to address such concerns.

Guardianship – The Living Probate

At CLA financial services, we understand  that as we live longer, we also become subject of mental illnesses that can impair our ability to make decisions for ourselves. Mental Incapacitation affects everyone as we get older. Unfortunately for many, it will get severe enough to a point that we won’t have the cognitive ability to make decisions for ourselves.

Most of us know someone suffering from Alzheimer or sever dementia and understand the problems that come with it. Many of those suffering from such illnesses have to move in with their children or into a nursing home to care for them. Unfortunately, when this happens, a guardianship has to be done in order for a judge to appoint a person to act on behalf of the affected person. Guardianship is also known as “Living Probate”. A Guardianship proceeding takes place in the same court as probate as much of the issues are the same. The judge has to evaluate the person’s mental abilities through doctor testimony and, if needed, will assign a guardian to handle the affairs of the person. Usually, a spouse or child will be appointed as the guardian. However, if no spouse or child is available, the Judge will have to decide who will serve as guardian, who may include a sibling, state employee, attorney or people who specialize in acting as guardians. The guardian, with the judge’s oversight, will then have control over all the assets, much like an executor does when someone dies with a Will or intestate. Every year, the guardian has to go before the judge to show what has happened over the year, he basically has to give an accounting over all the transactions that have occurred. If the judge believes the person has done a good job, he will reappoint the guardian for another year.

This can be a very time consuming and expensive process, even more than probating a Will. Costs for attorney and doctors add up quickly and the yearly accounting to the judge can be very stressful events for our loved ones. Many people don’t realize that guardianship can be completely avoided. For example, persons with a properly funded living trust can avoid guardianship since the trust “owns” all the assets. If you become unable to handle your own affairs, the successor trustee, a person you appoint, simply takes over management of the trust. While a living trust appears to be a complex estate planning tool, the truth is, with proper assistance, a living trust can be a valuable estate planning tool for every person. At CLA Estate Services, we help seniors understand the basics of how a trust works and how it can benefit them.

You Want to Ensure That Your Surviving Spouse or Heirs Will Have Access to Your Full Assets

Many seniors believe that joint tenancy laws and joint accounts are enough to ensure that their surviving spouse or heirs will have access to the money they need for bills and living expenses. Unfortunately, in some states, even joint accounts can be locked when an estate goes into probate.

In addition, joint accounts can have severe consequences, especially if you include your children on the accounts. There are other options to ensure an orderly transfer of your assets to your surviving spouse and heirs. At CLA Estate Services, we help you understand the pros and cons of various estate planning tools in order for you to make a more informed decision.


You Want to Ensure That Your Estate Won't be Diminished by Your Care and Expenses

The possibility of long term care or catastrophic illness is a very real one - one in three seniors will require long term care before the end of their lives. The costs of medical and long-term care can erode the value of your estate and leave your heirs with nothing but bills for your care. CLA Estate Services discusses the different alternatives available to help reduce this burden on your estate.

For more information about senior estate planning and asset financial advice, contact a CLA Estate Services to find out about the various ways that conservative planning can preserve and protect your assets.

Learning About Estate Planning with CLA Financial Services

Do you need to think about estate planning? If you're like the typical middle-income retiree, you probably think that estate planning isn't something you have to worry about. In fact, there are many reasons that everyone should at least think about estate planning and asset protection. CLA Estate Services provides education to seniors and retirees about estate planning and asset protection to help seniors make important and realistic decisions about their estates and their assets. CLA Financial Services focus on teaching seniors how to evaluate their assets, determine their needs and create an estate plan to ensure that their assets are allocated in the way that they feel is best.

Why Estate Planning Is Important

Estate planning is more than making a will. It involves making sure that your assets are designated and distributed in a way that protects their value and allows you to transfer the maximum possible value to your heirs upon your death. A good estate plan can protect your assets from undue taxes, avoid or minimize probate, ensure ongoing care and support for those who count on you and reduce the burdens that may fall upon your surviving spouse or children when you are unable to make decisions about your money and its transfer.

Who Should Consider Estate Planning

If you're uncertain about whether you need to think about estate planning, ask yourself these questions.

* Who do you want to control your estate in the event you become incapacitated or are no longer able to care for yourself, you or a Judge?

* Do you have people who rely on your financial assistance, such as a spouse, children or a disabled relative? What will happen to them if your estate is tied up in probate or reduced by taxes?

* Do you want to determine which of your heirs receives your possessions and assets upon your death?

* Do you want to ensure that your assets - including bank accounts, insurance benefits, stocks, etc. - are transferred to their intended recipients as easily and quickly as possible?


* Do you want to direct at what age your children receive their inheritance or ensure that it's preserved for them?

There are many ways to preserve your assets, ensure that you'll have the resources you need throughout your life and provide for their orderly transfer to your intended heirs upon your death. It's vital that you have the advice of your attorney and/or accountant when making any decisions about your finances and assets. At CLA Financial Services, we help provide you with the information you need to make decisions, ask the right questions and assist you in implementing your estate plan.

If you've never thought about estate planning or asset financial advice before, a CLA Estate Services agent can help you start planning and organizing your estate so that you know which decisions you have to make. Don't leave your family's future to chance. An estate plan can make all the difference in the world.

Learn About Estate Planning with CLA Estate Services

Are you sure that your current retirement plan will take care of you throughout your life? Have you made arrangements that will care for your family if you become incapacitated? How will your nest egg hold up if you become seriously ill or need long term care? Consultants from CLA financial services help seniors deal with these uncomfortable questions every day. The services provided by CLA Estate Services include education and solutions for seniors and retirees who may not have thought about these important questions.

The company offers complimentary workshops for retirees in cities across the country. The seminars cover various essential questions and information that seniors should understand to help them protect their assets and plan their estates. These questions are not easy ones for people to deal with - no one likes to contemplate their death or incapacitation - but they are essential to ensuring that your family is protected from the many costs that can accompany a catastrophic illness, long term care and the access and transfer of assets upon your death.

Over the years that CLA financial services has been offering their estate planning workshops, tens of thousands of seniors have benefited from learning about the estate planning process and the many tools available to execute a safe, conservative approach to asset protection. The issues discussed in these workshops can help seniors avoid costly mistakes and ensure that your family is cared for even when you aren't there to do it.

Maximizing Your Retirement
Seniors who attend the planning workshops learn strategies and get advice on how to protect their assets. Among other important topics, CLA educators help seniors understand the importance of maintaining control of your assets and your estate by outlining the tools available to help you plan for your family's future.

If you have concerns about your estate planning, the CLA workshops can help identify the issues and outline solutions. The workshops will help you understand what happens to your estate when you die or become incapacitated and how you can maintain control of distributing your assets rather than allowing a court to make those decisions for you. The workshops also addresses long term health care concerns, how to protect your assets, the dangers of joint accounts and how to avoid probate to ensure that your family has access to the assets you intend for them to have.

CLA financial services have been helping seniors plan for the financial future for well over a decade. The company is proud to maintain an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, thanks to their care and attention to clients and to their prompt response to the very few complaints filed with the BBB. If you are uncertain about estate planning and asset financial advice protection, look for a CLA workshop in your city and learn about the ways that you can protect yourself and your family through prudent and conservative financial planning.

Preserve Your Assets With CLA Financial Services

 Making it to your senior years with a healthy nest egg is quite an achievement - and not one that you achieved without a lot of hard work. Preserving that nest egg to last through your retirement and beyond takes solid financial planning, something that CLA financial services excel at doing. CLA Estate Services and CLA USA are in the business of helping you preserve the assets you worked so hard to accumulate. To that end, CLA USA, a Texas-based financial services company, offers a wide range of financial products and conservative asset financial advice aimed at helping you shift your assets into protective positions.

 The turmoil in the financial sector has forced many seniors and future retirees to reevaluate the safety of their investments, their retirement funds and the legacy they'd expected to hand down to their heirs. With the value of so many investments dwindling and the unsavory activities of many other financial "planners" in the industry, it's hard to know who to trust with your future plans. Logic dictates that those who cheat seniors and retirees don't remain in business for long. CLA has been offering financial services and financial advice to seniors for over 20 years. In a business that seems to attract get-rich-quick schemers and opportunists who prey on the financial worries of seniors, 20 years of service in the financial industry is a record of which CLA is rightfully proud.

CLA Estate Services include the various types of financial instruments that help seniors preserve their asset, advice on how to structure your estate to reduce or eliminate taxes and ways to ensure that your assets are transferred to your surviving spouse and children, or distributed in the way that you choose for them to be distributed. After all, you earned those assets through years of hard work. Why shouldn't your wishes for their distribution be honored when you pass on?

The goal of every CLA USA representative is to help you decide the best way to safeguard your assets and assist you in making your way through the complex financial instruments available to you. CLA's financial services agents will happily consult with your tax accountants and your attorney to help structure a plan that will preserve your estate for your heirs while providing you with the security to live out your retirement in comfort and health. And in the end, isn't that exactly what you've worked for all of your life?

CLA USA and Wealth Preservation Services

The law provides many ways for people to safeguard the money they've saved for retirement and to pass on to their children, but many people fail to take advantage of those provisions. Many people mistakenly believe that estate planning and preservation considerations are only for the wealthy. The truth is that estate planning is for any person who will leave behind an inheritance to his or her heirs and who wants to ensure that those heirs receive as much of that inheritance as possible. CLA Financial Services has made it a mission to educate seniors and retirees about the asset financial advice options available to them, and to assist seniors in finding the best tax shelters and retirement investments for their individual needs.

While many other financial services that concentrate on seniors are inundated with complaints and fraud allegations, CLA USA is proud to have maintained an A+ rating with the Dallas Better Business Bureau, and is an Accredited Business with BBBs in other states in which they operate. Learn more about investing for your future and for the future of your children and heirs with asset financial advice. Contact a CLA Financial Services agent to find out how you can take advantage of the many shelters the law allows.

CLA USA Shows Seniors How to Plan for the Future

After a lifetime of hard work and saving, you deserve the security of knowing that you will be financially secure throughout your retirement and your family will be protected when you're gone. CLA Financial Services, a provider of financial planning products understands your concerns and your needs. That's why they offer a wide variety of financial products with a focus on asset financial advice strategies that will preserve your nest egg for when you need it the most.

CLA USA understands that making sure you and your family have the assets you need is one of your most important priorities. They also understand that it's not easy to trust everything you hear about investment opportunities. There are so many scam companies out there that have sprung up in recent years to take advantage of seniors. CLA USA has been in business for over 20 years. They're no fly-by-night seller of unsuitable financial products. In fact, CLA USA is proud to hold an A+ rating with the Dallas/North Texas Better Business Bureau, and is an Accredited Business by the Better Business Bureau in every region it operates.

Estate planning and financial planning are two separate things, but they work together and should be thought of together as “Retirement Planning”. The intent of retirement planning is to ensure that you have the assets you need to live out your retirement comfortably. Many television ads and other advertisements for seniors all focus on healthy and fit seniors indulging in their childhood dreams, but retirement planning is about more than making sure that you have a steady income stream after you retire. There are other concerns that don't often get dealt with in the happy television ads.

Statistics show that 2 out of 3 seniors eventually require long term care or suffer a debilitating illness, but only 1 in 10 makes financial provisions for that care in advance. CLA Financial Services offers financial products that can help you in securing your future against all eventualities. The company's agents can help you understand the various types of insurance products you can use to safeguard your assets without jeopardizing the care you might someday require.

Seniors estate planning includes making decisions about surviving spouse benefits and arranging your assets to ensure that they're transferred to your heirs with as little loss as possible. Working with an agent from CLA USA can help you safeguard your assets through the conservative financial planning products and asset financial advice that are right for your situation.

Take Care of Estate Planning Easily

At CLA Estate Services, we understand how overwhelming and confusing the topic of estate planning can be to someone. We offer educational workshops on a variety of different topics all over the country and these workshops are designed to take the guesswork out of planning for your estate. Dying without leaving behind a will, trust or other legal documentation is a costly and timely mistake you will want to avoid and with our help, you do not have to let this happen to you.

We all do not like to think about the fact that someday we are going to die, but it is an inevitable reality which must be dealt with, because if we don't, we are cheating our family out of the benefit of knowing what to do when it happens. Estate planning involves deciding on how and to whom your assets will be divided, deciding on who you trust to manage your affairs, deciding on medical directives, appointing executors or successor trustees and many other issues. At CLA Estate Services, we know how difficult these issues can be to understand, which is why our workshops address these matters providing you with information you can use to navigate through this process.

Another major issue to address is what happens when you are no longer capable of taking care of yourself. Incapacitation is a real factor considering that we are living much longer. Mental disease, like Alzheimer's, incapacitation and dementia are real issues that we must address. Of course, these are all pointedly tough issues, which many people are quite uncomfortable thinking about, must less talking about. To best plan for the unexpected, you should understand that advance planning and receiving asset planning advice now will help you to have a plan of action in place if anything horrible like this were to happen to you.

CLA Estate Services provides educational workshops which will address these types of issues and the importance of estate planning. You will receive important information about the options available and their drawbacks. You want to do all you can to protect your family, so be as proactive about your death as you are about your life and take matters into your own hands today. At CLA Estate Services, we are here to guide you through this process and give you a peace of mind knowing that everything has been taken care of.

Estate Planning: Are you Prepared?

One of the greatest myths in the arena of estate planning is that only the wealthy have a reason to plan for the future. This is just not the case. At CLA Estate Services, we are dedicated to helping people understand that estate planning is absolutely vital for anyone. We must all face the inevitable, that at some point, we will not be around to help our spouses or our loved ones. With proper estate planning, one can be assured that their wishes will be carried forth upon their incapacity or death.

While we are still able to do so, this is the time to sit back and think seriously about your estate and ask yourself some serious questions. Who do you wish to inherit your assets? Who do I trust to handle my affairs if I become unable to take care of myself? Who do I trust to make decisions regarding my medical care? At CLA Estate Services, you can rest assured that you will have the resources to answer these questions and implement an estate plan which will ensure that your wishes are carried out.

For most people, there are three common ways to do estate planning. First, do nothing and a judge and state laws will decide who takes care of you and who will get your assets after you pass away. Second, is the widely used Last Will and Testament. A Will is a good starting point. It will outline who you want to give your assets to upon your death. A primary drawback of a Will is that it needs to be probated. Probate is the legal process of proving up a will and the entire process is overseen by a Judge. Unfortunately, probate can be a timely and, sometimes, costly process. How much and how long? The answer to that question is unknown. Another limitation to a Will is that it only operates upon your death and does nothing to help you in the event you can no longer take care of yourself. Called "Living Probate", in the event of your incapacitation, a guardianship or conservatorship must be established and is overseen by a Court. This can also be costly and time consuming process. Further, you have no control over who the Court will assign to handle your estate.

The third most commonly used estate plan is called a Revocable Living Trust. One of the biggest myths is that a Trust is only used for wealthy people for tax planning. This is just not the case. A Trust addresses most of the issues regarding estate planning. It will allow you to maintain control over your assets when you die or when you become incapacitated. Upon your death, the Trust will direct someone you trust to distribute your assets to your heirs as you have directed. It eliminates the probate process, so the oversight of a judge is not required. It also eliminates the unknowns regarding the time and cost of probate since a Trust is not probated. Further, a Trust eliminates the need for a guardianship or conservatorship in the event of your incapacitation. The Trust will direct someone that you have designated and trust to take over the management of your assets in your Trust. While CLA Estate Services cannot tell you which legal estate plan is best suited for your needs, we will educate you regarding your choices so that you know what questions to ask of your attorney. Remember, only a licensed attorney can advise you and draft a legal estate plan that is in your best interest.


We invite you to talk to a CLA financial services representative to help you better understand the need for estate planning and to show how the services of CLA Estate Services can lead you through this process in order for you to have the peace of mind you deserve.