Step-By-Step Estate Planning

The best time to plan for a rainy day is when the sun is shining. The same holds true for estate planning.

There’s no question that today is the day to start preparing for a comfortable retirement, or to start thinking about designing an estate plan that maximizes the benefit to your loved ones in the event of your death.

At Bridgewater Savings, we have designed a comprehensive service to help our customers accomplish just that. We provide a unique approach to estate planning that effectively integrates the legal and financial aspects of asset management in order to fully protect you and your family well into the future.

With an investment of just a few hours of your time, you’ll be provided with a comprehensive professional analysis of how you can preserve your assets and protect your estate.

What can we do for you?

• We can help seniors and their adult children with long-term care planning and estate planning, with managing assets in retirement and even planning for possible incapacity in later life.
• We can help people in their 50’s manage their retirement assets, plan long-term care strategies, deal with inheritances and make care plans for elderly parents.
• We can help parents with a special-needs child provide for ongoing guardianship for the child, and with asset management designed for the child’s continued care.
• We can help small business owners with business succession planning.
• We can help parents with children under age 18 with guardianship issues, asset management and college education planning.
• We can help property owners avert liability issues and avoid probate.
• We can help single people without children plan for financial security, and for the distribution of their assets in the event of their death.
• We can help people with taxable estates of over $1 million with estate tax planning.
   

The Estate Planning Process

1) Fact-finding session
The Process is very straightforward. The first step is to meet with a member of the financial planning team for a no additional cost, no-obligation fact-finding meeting.

You’ll discuss your financial goals and review pertinent information about your income and taxes, retirement accounts, personal property and real estate holdings and liabilities such as mortgages and loans. This meeting creates the framework for building your personal financial plan. The information you provide is then reviewed by an independent estate planning attorney.

2) Legal Analysis & Review
After a thorough review of your situation, the attorney prepares an action plan of steps you might want to take to protect your assets and maximize your resources.

This may include writing or restating a will, or setting up a new estate plan. It may include updating your current documents to make them consistent with not only your objectives, but to bring them up to current tax laws. It may address other dominant need issues such as your retirement, long-term care or business succession planning.

The steps will be explained in detail, giving you decision-making confidence. And, you’ll be provided with the attorney’s flat-fee charge for each service. Should your plan include services available through Infinex Investments, Inc. located at Bridgewater Savings, such as financial investments which are offered through Infinex Financial Group, or the Bank’s Trust Department, representatives will also be available to help you.

3) You choose
At this point, you can decide to take your personalized action plan to an attorney of your choice for follow-up. However, most people choose to continue on with us, taking advantage of the legal work and estate analysis already completed on their behalf.

When your legal documents are ready for signing, you will have an opportunity to review your decisions and have any remaining questions answered. And, the Process keeps your estate plan on track with periodic reviews, so that you have an opportunity to make adjustments to ensure your plans never become outdated.

4) Survivorship benefit
Because our financial professionals are actively involved in your estate planning process, we can be a valuable resource to your family members in the event of your death, helping with the many details involved in the transition of your estate.

5) It's all up to you!
To get started, call 508-884-5774 to set up a meeting at your convenience. Or, you can use our information request form to request an appointment, and a representative will get back to you.

Contact Bridgewater Savings

For more information on any of our trust and investments, or insurance products and services, please use our information request form, stop by our branch or give us a call at 1-800-356-8622.