Estate Planning in South Florida

Matwiczyk & Brown, LLP, drafts estate plans for clients in South Florida.  Our services extend to clients from throughout the United States.  We strive to ensure that your personal wealth—whether in the form of real property, investments, or other assets—is protected for your loved ones.  

Our Palm Beach lawyers are ready to serve your personal estate planning needs. This involves carefully choosing legal and financial instruments that will effectively transfer your wealth, as well as creating legal documents that clearly articulate your wishes.

West Palm Beach wills lawyer

Wills are a common way to designate beneficiaries of your property and assets—however, if you have more complex or valuable properties or a desire to keep your estate plan discreet, you may want to consider some alternatives to wills. These alternatives, when used effectively by a wills lawyer in Palm Beach, can transfer assets to family or friends in a manner that is more private and in some cases more efficient.

  • Payable on Death (PoD) accounts: Create an "informal trust" that will avoid probate and transfer money to a designated beneficiary after you die.
  • Real property held in joint tenancy between spouses: Directly transfers property, such as a house, if your spouse is a joint tenant.
  • Life insurance policies: Pay the proceeds of a policy directly to a beneficiary.
  • Retirement accounts: Bypass probate and transfers money directly to the specified beneficiary of the account.
  • Revocable and irrevocable trusts: Discreetly transfer money and investments while avoiding probate.
  • Gifts: Transfers to family members during lifetime.

In most cases, a client has the freedom to revise components of his estate plan as the circumstances of his or her life change

In addition to naming beneficiaries and giving instructions about how you would like your assets divided and distributed, a wills lawyer in Palm Beach from Matwiczyk & Brown, LLP helps clients create powers of attorney and designate pre-needs guardians.  Powers of attorney are legal documents that give responsibility to another person or entity for handling health care issues, as well as legal and financial matters. Similar to a power of attorney, but with a legal mandate from a court, a guardianship also delegates certain powers and responsibilities from one person to another. 

Contact us

Our Palm Beach wills lawyers work closely with you to ensure that you have all the documents you need to fully enforce your estate plan. For estate planning in West Palm Beach, contact us today or call us at 516-651-4004.