I am preparing my estate plan, and need to list all my real property. What is real property?
Estate planning includes planning for the transfer of someone’s personal and real property after your death. When you prepare to meet with an estate planning attorney, it’s a good idea to have an updated asset inventory. This will help your attorney understand your situation and guide you on the best ways to protect your assets and pass them to your heirs.
An asset inventory is a list of all your valuable and sentimental possessions that you want to leave to your family, charitable organizations or other distributions. This inventory should include property, accounts, safety deposit boxes, storage units, jewelry and sentimental family treasures such as heirlooms, recipes, photo albums or scrapbooks.
Assets that are permanently fixed and cannot be moved such as a home or land are considered real property. For legal and estate planning purposes, this includes the right to possess, sell, lease, and enjoy the real property. Often this includes what is below the land, and the air rights above the land.
Your estate plan could include real property that you own such as your home, investment properties or a vacation home, and whether any of your real property is in a state other than your primary residence.
Includes items such as furniture, clothes, equipment, tools or cash are considered personal property. Simply, personal property is anything that can be moved.
Personal property can also be intangible property, that you cannot touch or see such as bank accounts, intellectual property or licenses.
For tax reasons, it’s important to differentiate between real and personal property in your estate plan. When making an inventory of your assets, it’s essential to correctly categorize your property so that your heirs don’t have an unexpected tax burden.
Estate planning is preparing for the future. Contact Estate & Probate Legal Group in Lombard Illinois today at 630-864-5835.
AREAS WE SERVE: Cook, Dupage, Kane, Lake, and Will counties
