Michigan Estate Planning
Over 100 Years of Combined Estate Planning Experience
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Michigan Estate Planning
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You deserve an estate plan that protects the people you love, preserves what you have built, and gives your family clarity during difficult moments.
To achieve this, you need Michigan estate planning attorneys who listen carefully, understand your concerns, and help you create a plan that reflects your real-life circumstances.
Our estate planning attorneys at Mall Malisow & Cooney have built our practice on truly understanding clients like you and delivering what they truly want. Let us create an estate plan that’s both legally sound and tailored to your unique needs and goals.
A well-crafted estate plan provides protection, reassurance, and relief from uncertainty for you and your loved ones.
This is achieved by having the right legal protections in place that address asset management, incapacity, medical decision-making, long-term care concerns, and protections for vulnerable family members.
Having a proper estate plan is especially important in Michigan, where anyone without an estate plan will have probate court divide their estate after they pass away. This is because assets and property are generically divided according to their legal priority under Michigan law, not according to personal preference.
Having the state divide assets rarely produces positive outcomes for Michigan families, especially those with special needs and those involving second marriages, blended families, families with estranged relatives, or situations involving unmarried partners.
Knowing all that’s at stake, it’s essential to receive effective estate planning guidance to ensure your decisions will be carried out as you desire.
This effective estate planning approach involves using the legal tools Michigan law provides, such as wills, trusts, and powers of attorney.
Let the Michigan estate planning lawyers at Mall Malisow & Cooney use these and other tools to craft an estate plan that ensures your wishes are honored and loved ones are cared for.
Often the foundation of an estate plan, a Michigan will accomplishes a number of important goals:
Michigan law requires a will to be made voluntarily by an adult of at least 18 years of age and of sound mental capacity who understands the nature and extent of their property. It must also be signed by the testator (the person creating the will) and witnessed by at least two individuals.
Additionally, a will that is legally valid In Michigan must comply with the Estates and Protected Individuals Code (EPIC), which provides legal guidance as to what is acceptable.
However, knowing and meeting all of these state requirements is only part of drafting a will. Afterall, deciding how your cherished possessions should be distributed is not a simple task, especially since these decisions often have an immense impact on your loved ones.
Knowing this, the estate planning attorneys at Mall Malisow & Cooney never take a generic approach to creating wills, nor do we treat them as just another legal form.
Instead, we take the time to truly get to know and understand our clients. We ask key questions about family relationships, long-term expectations, and even the concerns that may be difficult to express.
Using these unique insights, we’ll craft a will that achieves exactly what you want, even if you’re not sure about how to accomplish that at the beginning.
Additionally, we will ensure your will fully adheres to the law, making it legally binding to protect your legacy and loved ones.
Learn more about wills in Michigan >>
Trusts are one of the most versatile estate planning tools available under Michigan law. People who want to provide asset protection, save taxes, control the timing of distributions, protect beneficiaries, or structure long-term oversight of assets often use trusts to do so.
Trusts are especially valuable for Michigan residents with:
While there are a wide variety of uses for trusts, a revocable trust (sometimes called a living trust) is the most common in Michigan. It allows the trust maker to retain control during their lifetime, meaning they can change it or even revoke it altogether if they choose.
This contrasts with an irrevocable trust, which cannot be changed once it’s created. These are commonly used for asset protection, long-term care planning, tax planning, or benefits eligibility.
However, there are a variety of other types of Michigan trusts that our estate planning attorneys use, such as:
Recognizing their many differences, it’s essential to utilize the knowledgeable, experienced legal help at Mall Malisow & Cooney to guide your choices involving trusts and to ensure it includes exactly what you need.
Because of our profound understanding of how to handle these matters, our estate lawyers have received countless trust case referrals from other law firms and other professional colleagues.
We help you understand what choices to make, including difficult scenarios such as:
Having handled trusts for a combined 100+ years, we anticipate how your trust will function now and for years to come.
Let us provide trust planning that is right for you, avoids potential problems, is legally valid, and is workable in real life.
Learn more about Michigan trusts >>
One of the most common mistakes in estate planning is failing to prepare for incapacity or loss of decision-making ability.
Many clients assume spouses or adult children automatically have this authority. However, the state of Michigan does not grant automatic decision-making rights to family members without proper legal documentation that grants this authority.
To ensure your affairs are attended to by someone you trust in these scenarios, Michigan law allows for you to appoint a person (called an agent or attorney-in-fact) to handle matters during incapacity. This is done by means of a legal document known as a Power of Attorney (POA).
Michigan utilizes a number of different powers of attorneys for different needs.
For example, a Financial Power of Attorney may be used to authorize someone to act on your behalf to conduct financial business.
In other cases, a Medical Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care allows a trusted person to make healthcare decisions, including end-of-life choices that are consistent with your wishes if you become unable to give informed consent or speak for yourself.
Our Michigan estate planning attorneys take the time to explain what these documents do, as well as how they function in real-world settings like hospitals, financial institutions, and care facilities.
Trust Mall Malisow & Cooney to create a power of attorney that ensures your affairs are attended to by someone you trust, no matter what the future holds.
Learn more about Michigan powers of attorney >>
Michigan families with children or adults who have disabilities face unique estate planning requirements and challenges.
For example, federal benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid are means-tested (welfare), which may result in a special needs child not receiving these benefits if they receive an inheritance in the wrong way.
However, a special needs trust is recognized by both federal law and Michigan law as a way to ensure your loved one receives public benefits and assistance while still having trust assets available for supplemental support.
The attorneys at Mall Malisow & Cooney are ready to help you with any estate planning needs, including those involving children or adults with special needs.
In fact, other estate planning professionals frequently seek out our help with special needs trusts because of our thorough understanding of Michigan benefit eligibility rules, guardianship issues, long-term care planning, and ongoing trust administration.
We also assist families as their child approaches age 18, when Michigan law treats them as an adult even if they are not capable of independent decision-making.
Let us handle every aspect of your estate plan involving a loved one with special needs.
Learn more about special needs planning in Michigan >>
Many Michigan families today are blended, multigenerational, unmarried, or structured around cohabitation without marriage.
Yet, the laws surrounding inheritance or surrogate decision makers do not protect unmarried partners at all, and may even create tension in blended families. This is because current laws favor biological or adopted relatives instead of the actual relationships within the household.
Fortunately, a carefully designed estate plan can prevent disputes, clarify priorities, and ensure that the person or people you consider “family” are actually protected under the law.
This is especially important when there are children from prior relationships, a surviving spouse in a second or later marriage, or a long-term partner who would otherwise be left with no legal rights.
Our Michigan estate planning attorneys take the time to understand the unique dynamics of your family and are ready to help ensure your loved ones are cared for.
Estate planning in Michigan requires an extra level of legal understanding when complex assets are involved.
These may include:
Transferring these and other complex assets requires careful succession planning. Without proper structure, ownership may become tied up in probate, which can interrupt operations or trigger disputes among heirs.
Having our estate planning lawyers on your side will utilize the right legal tools in the right way to help ensure your estate wishes are honored.
What truly sets Mall Malisow & Cooney apart is more than just our professionalism and technical expertise with estate planning — it’s also the way we work with people.
We’ve seen that many clients arrive knowing they need an estate plan, but not knowing how to describe what they want their plan to accomplish. Others feel overwhelmed by terminology they have not encountered before.
We go to great lengths to make working with us both easy and enjoyable.
For example, we use clear, easily understandable language so that you feel in control and confidently know what to do.
We also anticipate both your legal issues and the personal ones by asking the right questions that most people would not think to ask themselves.
All the while, we listen attentively so that we can deliver the estate planning solutions you’re looking for.
Thanks to our estate planning insights combined with personal understanding and concern, we have had the privilege of successfully crafting thousands of estate plans for Michigan residents like you.
Mall Malisow & Cooney are here to provide the estate planning that helps you protect your family, preserve your legacy, and make sure your wishes are honored.
Whether your planning needs are straightforward or complex, we will listen attentively, help clarify your goals, and create a plan that protects what you cherish most.
Call us today at 248-538-1800 or fill out our contact form.
