Recent Blog Posts
Enhanced Life Estate Deeds Enable You To Give Your House To Your Children And Keep It For Yourself, Too
Some people write their estate plans such that one beneficiary (usually the testator’s spouse) has the right to stay in the testator’s house for the rest of that beneficiary’s life, but after that beneficiary dies, another heir (usually the testator’s children from a previous marriage or the testator’s siblings) inherits the house. Five states,… Read More »
How Does Your Small Business Fit Into Your Estate Plan?
Some people were made to be small business owners. When you are operating a business, there is always something to do, but there is no one bossing you around. You can make plenty of money if you apply yourself, but sometimes even if you devote all your waking hours to your business, you don’t… Read More »
Retirement Planning Beyond The Honeymoon Phase
Imagine if you interviewed for a job, and the hiring manager told you how much money you would get, showed you all the company swag, and enthused about the Christmas party but didn’t tell you anything about the work you would be doing. This is how retirement planners sometimes behave toward people who are… Read More »
You Can’t Take Your Bitcoins With You When You Die, So Work Them Into Your Estate Plan
Sometimes old age creeps up on you quickly, but other times it jumps out in front of you and startles you. One minute, you were proud of yourself that your straight leg trousers were appropriate for both work and leisure, and then every news headline started saying that you know you’re old if you… Read More »
How To Protect Your Future Self From Financial Abuse
Last month, a court in Fort Pierce sentenced Sherri Lynn Smith, 52, to 51 months in federal prison followed by four years of supervised release after she pleaded guilty to bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. Between 2016 and 2019, Smith worked as a caregiver to an elderly couple in Broward County, and they… Read More »
Planning For Memory Care
Memory impairment, whether due to Alzheimer’s disease or to other causes, is prevalent in older adults. It is painful to watch a family member grow increasingly forgetful, and perhaps have little memory of the experiences you have shared together; it is equally unsettling to imagine yourself in that situation. In fact, confronting the thought… Read More »
You Don’t Have To Be Dirt Poor To Qualify For Summary Administration
Conventional wisdom about estate planning holds that everyone who is able to avoid probate should do so, and that the easiest ways to accomplish this are by being very rich or very poor. If the former applies, then your estate still goes through the motions of probate, while most of your assets pass to… Read More »
Pets And Your Estate Plan
So many of your hopes and worries related to your estate plan have to do with providing for your children and grandchildren, or for seeing to the care of your surviving spouse and siblings in their old age. Meanwhile, your generosity toward family members, even while you are alive, is often met with ingratitude… Read More »
You Call That A Retirement Fund?
As the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Elliot demonstrates in a most unnerving way, your worst enemy and the biggest obstacle to your happiness is indecision. If you read that poem in high school English class, as many members of Generation X did, you probably focused on Prufrock’s inability… Read More »
If Your Estate Plan Doesn’t Include A Power Of Attorney, It Needs One
Introducing the good enough estate plan. If you are old enough to be aware of your mortality, then you are old enough to put some instructions in writing about what should happen to your body, children, and property (no matter how meager that property might be) when you die. The rest can wait. If… Read More »