Be Careful Relying on Life Insurance to Provide for Loved Ones In an estate plan, life insurance can be used as a source of immediate liquidity for beneficiaries by offering a tax-free, lump-sum payment upon the insured’s death. About half of Americans have a life insurance policy. The primary reason people purchase life insurance is [...]
Wills, Trusts, & Dying Intestate: How They Differ Most people understand that having an estate plan benefits them and their loved ones. However, many individuals do not initiate the estate planning process because they do not fully understand the nuances of foundational estate planning tools such as a will and a trust and the full [...]
Caution: Using a DIY Deed To Avoid Probate Can Lead To Unintended Consequences One common way to avoid the probate requirement for real estate after the owner dies is to add children or other individuals to the property title as joint owners with rights of survivorship. When joint owners have survivorship rights and one joint [...]
Have You Checked Your Beneficiary Designations Lately? You regularly check the balances of your retirement, bank, and investment accounts. But when was the last time you checked the beneficiary designations on these accounts (and really, all the other accounts that allow you to name a beneficiary)? It may have been years since you first opened [...]
How To Pick a Trustee, Executor & Agent Under a Power Of Attorney While the term fiduciary is a legal term with a rich history, it generally means someone who is legally obligated to act in another person’s best interest. Trustees, executors, and agents are examples of fiduciaries. When you select people to fill these [...]
How Are My Business Documents Relevant to My Estate Plan? Studies consistently find that only about 25–35 percent of Americans have an estate plan, a shockingly low rate when you consider that, in the absence of a plan, the state—not you or your family—decides what happens to your assets, including your business interests. The overall [...]
3 Ways To Manage The Cost Of Your Estate Plan You may think creating a simple estate plan should be easy and something you can do independently. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Estate planning laws vary greatly from state to state, can sometimes be complicated, and constantly change. An experienced estate planning attorney stays [...]
Things To Consider When a Parent Is Out of Town Your estate plan may include powers of attorney that allow a trusted person to act on your behalf and advocate for you with regard to medical and financial matters when you cannot do so yourself. But do you have a similar document in place that [...]
What Conditions Can I Put on My Child’s Inheritance? When designing your estate plan, you have two primary options for leaving an inheritance to a child: 1) you can give it to them all at once, in a single lump sum, with no strings attached; or 2) you can establish some level of control over [...]
Can I Leave My Spouse Out of My Estate Plan? The relationship between spouses is uniquely significant, especially when it comes to estate planning. Where you are generally able to exclude individuals such as parents, siblings, and adult children from your estate plan, the law provides special protections to help protect married individuals from being [...]
