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"Advice offered by Marc Hebert, president of\u00A0The Harbor Group Inc., a registered investment adviser.Regardless of the dollar value of your assets, estate planning is important and it\u2019s not just for a certain age group either. Estate planning is the way to make sure your wishes are carried out after your death. The key is not only getting the planning done, but getting it done correctly and to suit your needs.You might think the rich and famous would be way ahead of you in this area. After all, they have money and access to top estate planning attorneys. However, there is evidence to the contrary -- here are a few people of note that died with, shall we say, less than perfect estate planning.No estate plan:Probably the biggest mistake one can make is to have no plan in place. Consider the case of \u201CSonny\u201D Bono. He died in a skiing accident in 1998 and left no will or estate plan of any kind. This forced his wife to petition the probate court to be appointed her deceased husband\u2019s administrator, to seek court permission to continue various business ventures her husband was involved in, and to settle claims made against the estate. She further had to deal with an individual maintaining to be Sonny\u2019s child, later disproved by DNA testing, who brought a claim against the estate that had to be resolved.Do-it-yourself disaster:You might think you can easily and cheaply complete your estate planning by using a do-it-yourself service. While this may be true for you, your family may feel differently once you pass away. Contemplate the case of Justice Warren E. Burger, who died in 1995. He evidently typed his own 176-word will. In it, he neglected to address several issues that would have saved his family $450,000 in taxes and relieved his family of the burden of seeking the court\u2019s permission to complete various administrative tasks.Keeping your estate plan current:Your estate plan is done -- this however doesn\u2019t necessarily mean done for the rest of your life. Circumstances change. Laws change. It is important to review your documents periodically. In failing to review and update his will prepared years earlier, Heath Ledger overlooked providing for Michelle Williams, his \u201Csignificant\u201D other, and their daughter Matilda Rose. Despite the family disharmony, eventually the issues were resolved.Where are the documents?The best prepared documents are of no use if the people responsible for carrying out your wishes don\u2019t know where to find them. This was the case for the family of Olympic medalist Florence Griffith Joyner, who died at age 38. Her husband couldn\u2019t locate her will. This led to a dispute between Mr. Joyner and Flo Jo\u2019s mother, who claimed the right to live in the Joyner home for the rest of her life."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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