Category: Will
The will of Melissa Mathison, who passed away in November with an estate estimated at $22 million, is missing. Melissa Mathison, famous for writing the screenplay for the movie E.T. and being the ex-wife of actor Harrison Ford, died of cancer in November. The couple’s divorce was the subject of much gossip as Mathison walked […]
A key part of an annual year-end review of financial planning should include a review of the estate plan. As the end of each year approaches, people who keep close watch on their financial plans take that time to look at investments, asset relocations and a close look at the status of their retirement plans. […]
Former NBA player Lamar Odom may have made a mistake with his estate planning when he apparently didn’t consider divorce in his planning. Lamar Odom, husband of reality TV star Khloe Kardashian, was found recently near death in a Nevada brothel and may have made a mistake in his estate planning prior to the incident […]
When it comes to IRAs most couples name each other the beneficiary and the remaining spouse creates a spousal rollover. If the surviving spouse is incapacitated by an ailment such as dementia, complications can arise. What happens when end-of-life affairs are set up for a couple and one member later becomes incompetent? The potential problem […]
Many websites now exist where an estate plan can be stored online, but a word of caution on storing a valuable plan in the cloud. A new trend in the world of estate planning was reported in a recent article in U.S. News and World Report, “Passwords and Powers of Attorney: Your Digital Estate Planning […]
Downloading online legal forms brings a risk as well as being popular, easy and cheap. There is a boom today in the ease of downloading online legal forms with expenses as low as $100 or less for some key forms such as wills and powers of attorney but there are also some hidden dangers that […]
A Texas case ends up in criminal charges when a will to probate is rejected by the court. Eight days before wealthy Dallas business woman Mary Ellen Bendtsen passed away in 2005, a will was executed that left her entire estate to two antique dealers. One of the dealers submitted the will to probate the […]
Let’s cut right to the chase: one of the most common estate planning mistakes is simple to avoid and usually the result of sheer forgetfulness. It has nothing to do with the will or estate taxes. It’s the beneficiary designation. People forget to make changes as their life circumstances change. It’s quite common for ex-spouses […]
Should you suddenly become uber-wealthy, you’ll want to purchase a pricey art collection, which is 2.6 percent of the biggest estates. For those with only $10 million to $20 million in assets, a small collection, valued at about 0.6 percent of your estate, is almost de rigueur. There are extreme differences in the super rich […]
Taxes and inheritance issues go together like Halloween and trick or treating. Tax planning is a critical part of estate planning, and families who wish to transfer assets from one generation to the next need to prepare for both aspects, as settling an estate can easily become quite complicated. Many estate plans include the use […]
