Estate Planning
Estate planning is one of the most effective ways to arrange the future transfer of your wealth and protect the people who matter most to you. At Stillman Bank, we know that life changes at every stage — and the best plans are the ones you revisit as it does. Whether you’re building a plan for the first time or reviewing one you already have, we’d be glad to help.
Estate Planning Details
Estate planning can help you with goals such as:
- ✔ Designing and administering trusts to meet your specific objectives, including living trusts, testamentary trusts, and charitable trusts.
- ✔ Serving as executor or co-executor of your estate.
- ✔ Minimizing estate taxes.
- ✔ Personal planning for incapacity and death.
- ✔ Avoiding the expense and delay of probate.
- ✔ Benefiting charitable organizations.
Why Choose Stillman Bank
Carrying out an estate is detailed, deadline-driven work — and it usually falls to someone during a difficult time. Naming a family member as executor or trustee can place a heavy, unfamiliar burden on them, often while they’re grieving.
Stillman Trust & Wealth Management can take that on as a professional fiduciary. We administer trusts and serve as executor with the experience to handle the paperwork, tax deadlines, and distributions correctly — working alongside your attorney and CPA, not in place of them. And as a corporate trustee, we offer continuity and impartiality an individual can’t: we don’t move away, and we don’t take sides among the people you care about.
We’re also local. For more than 140 years, Stillman Bank has served families across the Stateline, and the team handling your estate is one you can sit down with face to face.
Related Articles
Common Questions
+ What Exactly Is “an Estate”?
Your estate is everything you own. That includes physical assets like your home (or homes) and any other real estate, personal belongings such as jewelry, vehicles, and artwork, and financial assets like bank accounts, investments, retirement accounts, business interests, and life insurance.
+ Are Estates Mostly for Wealthy People?
Not at all — that’s one of the most common misconceptions about estate planning. A plan isn’t only about money and property. It lets you name guardians for your children and make sure they’re provided for if something happens to you. It can also make it easier for your family to receive what you leave them, and it lets you put arrangements in place — while you’re able to — in case you ever become physically or mentally incapacitated.
+ What’s the Difference Between Estate Planning and a Will?
A will is a legally binding document that directs how your assets are distributed after you pass away. Because it’s carried out through probate court, it can involve delays and become part of the public record.
Estate planning is broader. It covers how your assets are handled both during your life and after you’re gone, and can include arrangements like managed care and end-of-life services. It often involves one or more trusts that pass outside of court — saving time and money, and keeping your affairs private.
+ Is Estate Planning the Same as Power of Attorney?
While a power of attorney is often part of estate planning, the two aren’t the same. Estate planning is the overall framework for how your assets are used to care for you and your family.
A power of attorney gives someone you trust — a friend or relative — the legal authority to act on your behalf on financial, legal, or healthcare matters if you’re unable to. That authority can be as narrow or as broad as you choose. Related documents, such as a living will, can spell out your preferences for end-of-life care.
One key difference: a power of attorney is only in effect during your lifetime, while estate planning governs your assets both while you’re alive and after you pass away.