Year: 2015
Life is about changes, both good and bad. Children grow up and marry and have children of their own. Families experience the pain of divorce. New families are created when divorced parents remarry. Many of these changes require revisiting and making changes to your estate plan. Even when your family life is stable, laws change […]
If you are a pet owner, chances are you love your pets and consider them family members. We love them, we buy them toys, and it is not usual for people to bury their beloved pets in pet cemeteries. However, we often do not make plans for what will happen to our pets if we […]
No stranger to unusual estate issues — like a pet eel with no named caretaker and a security detail for a ring worth half a million dollars — the Orange County Public Administrator’s Office is now preparing for an estate sale of Gerald Willits, who left behind 69 cars in his yard, several real estate […]
Young children are often the driving force for parents to come to see an estate planner and set up a trust. The concern that the worst possible situation may occur and the children will be raised without their parents is unfortunately something that must be considered. When parents do not plan ahead for their minor […]
A word to the wise: if you cannot find an independent financial report on an investment property, usually that is because it does not exist. A resident of Naperville, Illinois scammed a group of retirees with a convincing story of lucrative Turkish bonds that both he and his family were personally invested in. No one asked […]
Trusts are widely used by estate planning attorneys, with good reason. Trusts are a good way to pass wealth from one generation to the next, protecting assets from the effects of estate taxes, divorce, creditors and scam artists. But trusts are not the only way to transfer wealth. There are times when a simple outright […]
It’s so easy to put off estate planning, when lives are busy and there are more inviting things to think about than death and taxes. Perhaps the most common mistake is thinking that estate planning is a do-it-yourself project. Only if you want your loved ones to inherit a mess! The biggest problem that results […]
Cancer patients from low-income, at-risk populations face an even tougher road to a cure than those who are well-off. Even if they somehow manage to obtain quality health care and survive their illness, massive medical debt can leave their lives in shambles. An estate planning attorney can be a valuable ally, as can not-for-profit organizations […]
Getting to a successful estate plan can be a tricky road to follow. Laws create a path that has many steep inclines and sharp curves. The biggest roadblocks to a successful estate plan, however, are not written in statute books or government regulations. They exist in the mind. Collaboration between an estate planning attorney and […]
Families in the United States and the United Kingdom who think they can save a few pence by downloading wills from online services are learning the hard way that cheap wills usually become very expensive when the person dies. The only person who gets the bargain is the person who is paying for the will […]
