Given the highly personal and important nature of estate planning, the prospect of selecting an attorney to assist you with the creation of your plan may seem intimidating. At the Augulis Law Firm in Bergen County, New Jersey we understand how important your estate plan is to you and how difficult it can be to trust someone to help you with the creation of that plan. We would be honored to work with you on the creation of your comprehensive estate plan to ensure that your plan protects and grows your assets while you are alive as well as ensuring that those assets continue to provide for loved ones when you are gone.
Bergen County, New Jersey
Covering almost 250 square miles in the northeastern corner of New Jersey, Bergen County is part of the New York City Metropolitan Area and is directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan. As of the 2017 Census estimate, the county’s population was 948,406, an increase of 4.8 percent from the 2010 United States Census.
Like most of the northeast, the area now known as Bergen County was originally inhabited by Native American people, specifically the Lenape Nation. The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in what would eventually become Bergen County, considering the area part of New Netherland. In fact, the first permanent European settlement in the territory of present-day New Jersey occurred in Bergen Township around 1660. Approximately two decades later, in 1683, Bergen County was officially recognized by the Provincial Assembly. Over a century later, in 1837, Bergen County lost almost half of its population when Passaic and Hudson Counties were formed from parts of Bergen and Essex counties.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Bergen County saw a flurry of activity when changes to the state laws made it easier to form municipalities with the Borough form of government. Those changes resulted in the creation of 26 boroughs in Bergen County in 1894 alone. The completion of the George Washington Bridge in 1931 which linked Fort Lee to Manhattan also led to rapid development within the county throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
Today, Bergen County is consistently ranked as one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. Residents and visitors to Bergen County enjoy an extensive park system totaling nearly 9,000 acres as well as numerous important historical buildings and landmarks that date back as far as the 17th century.
Augulis Law Firm in the Bergen County, New Jersey Community
As you may already know, the creation of an estate plan can be a highly sensitive and very personal undertaking. Working with the right estate planning attorney is crucial to creating a plan that reflects your estate planning needs and objectives. Your choice of estate planning attorney is one of the most important decisions you will make over the course of your lifetime. The estate planning attorneys at the Augulis Law Firm would be honored to be chosen to assist you in the creation of an estate plan that helps protect everything that matters to you.
Nurturing the relationships we have with our estate planning clients is a priority for us because we firmly believe that the most successful estate plans are those that are continuously reviewed and revised to ensure they address today’s needs and concerns. With that in mind, we work to develop an ongoing relationship with you that affords us the necessary insight into events in your life that should prompt a corresponding change to your estate plan. The initial estate plan you create when you are young and single, for example, will not serve to protect and provide once you are married with children. Life events, such as marriage and parenthood, dictate updates to your plan, such as the addition of incapacity planning, creating a trust to protect your minor child’s inheritance, and the inclusion of your spouse and/or children as beneficiaries throughout your estate plan. As your estate grows, you may need to consider asset protection tools within your plan as well as probate and tax avoidance strategies. Looking forward to your retirement years, you will likely want to merge your retirement and estate plans to ensure they work harmoniously together. The high cost of long-term care may also cause you to incorporate Medicaid planning into your estate plan. If you have strong beliefs with regard to end of life medical care and/or the treatment of your body after death, our estate planning attorneys might urge you to execute an advance directive as well as create a funeral planning component within your comprehensive estate plan to ensure that your wishes will be honored.
Our hope at Augulis Law Firm is that we can be there with you throughout the various phases of your life to help ensure that your estate plan protects you, your assets, and your loved ones both now and in the future.
Contact Us
If you have additional questions about Bergen County, New Jersey estate planning, contact the experienced New Jersey estate planning lawyers at Augulis Law Firm by calling 908-222-8803 to schedule your appointment today.
