Review Your Plans
It is always a good idea to take a moment and make the necessary steps to update your estate plans—so they reflect any recent changes in your life.
During this challenging period, we are thinking of you and your loved ones. Our work in cancer challenges us to face the unprecedented, and we are applying the same approach to the evolving situation posed by Novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19. Meeting the needs of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) patients and continuing critically important work are our highest priorities, and generous donors who make planned gifts help ensure we can.
Use the following checklist to see if you are prepared for anything unexpected in the future, and for the careful management and distribution of your assets.
- Review your will, checking for any changes that may need to be made because of a change in your life or that of a beneficiary’s, tax law changes, or because you want to add a gift to MSK in your plans.
- Check that the executor you’ve named is still the qualified individual you want to manage your estate, resolve claims, minimize taxes, and distribute the designated portions of your estate to your chosen beneficiaries.
- Be sure you are comfortable with the guardian named in your will for those under your care. If your dependents were minor children that are grown now, does a guardian still need to be listed?
- Update beneficiaries designated for your insurance policies and retirement plans to make sure you haven’t named a loved one that is now deceased or former spouse. Name backup beneficiaries, too. Consider naming MSK as a beneficiary of your insurance policies or retirement plans if you have not already done so.
- Make sure the titles for your assets reflect your current circumstances and wishes, so they go to the people and organizations you intend.
- Implement plans that minimize federal estate taxes. One possible solution is to leave a charitable gift to MSK.
- Include in your estate plans a health care power of attorney to guide your family and health care providers when you are unable to make decisions for yourself.
Please contact the Office of Planned Giving at 800-688-1827 or giftplanning@mskcc.org if you would like to extend your support for MSK. We would be happy to help you design a gift that fits your goals. If you have already included MSK in your long-range plans, please let us know.