Category Archives: Estate Planning
How Not To Help Your Children Financially: Advice From An Estate Planning Lawyer
From an estate planning perspective, there are no right or wrong answers about how much or how little money to give your adult children. As long as you have enough money left over for your own retirement expenses and healthcare, you can continue to spoil your children and grandchildren as much as you want. … Read More »
How Important Is Life Insurance in Your Estate Plan?
At every age, you have probably heard people advise you not to be insurance-poor. Trying to get most types of insurance to pay for what they promised to pay for, whether it is your health insurance paying for doctor’s office visits or your car insurance paying for vehicle repair after a car accident. At… Read More »
Probate Gets Complicated When Long-Lost Siblings Enter the Picture
DNA science has changed the world for the better. It has demonstrated the innocence of people wrongfully accused of violent crimes and even exonerated some who had been wrongfully convicted. It has definitively refuted racist arguments about the biological superiority of one race over others. It has enabled people who were adopted as infants… Read More »
Earth to Baby Boomer Parents: Just Say “No” to Freeloading Adultolescents
It’s no secret that your children’s generation faces financial struggles that were much easier to avoid when you were young than they are today. Well-paying jobs that didn’t require a university degree were easier to find, and college education was much less expensive. Meanwhile, even necessities like housing and groceries have gone up in… Read More »
Life Estate: When You Can Stay in Your Deceased Spouse’s House for the Rest of Your Life, but You Do Not Inherit the House
The law treats your homestead, that is, the house which is your primary and permanent residence, differently from how it treats other possessions, and even from how it treats other real estate properties. For example, in bankruptcy cases, it is often possible to claim a homestead exemption where you get to keep your house… Read More »
Home Mortgages and Florida Estate Law
They say that estate planning is about planning for life, not planning for death. Therefore, when you are in the daydreaming phase of the estate planning process, discussion of home mortgages usually goes something like this: Let’s use the annual gift tax exclusion to give [your child’s name] $15,000 so he can use it… Read More »
Probate Disputes Over Personal Property
Personal property, such as furniture, jewelry, and other items commonly referred to as a person’s “stuff,” is usually the last thing you think about when you write your will or craft your estate plan. Most people are more concerned about the truly big-ticket items, such as real estate properties and bank accounts. In fact,… Read More »
Frequent Flier Miles and Estate Law
Many people dream of spending their retirement years traveling the world. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has put the travel plans of millions of retirees on hold indefinitely. Thanks to an increasing number of COVID-19 vaccine doses being administered, the number of new cases nationwide has been decreasing in the past few weeks, but the… Read More »
Make Your Wishes About Guardianship Known Now, While You Are Healthy Enough Not to Need a Guardian
You have probably heard heartbreaking stories of elder abuse in which a caregiver, in some cases a professional caregiver but in other cases a family member, swindled an elderly person out of large sums of money while the person was in failing health. Perhaps the unscrupulous caregiver talked the victim into changing his will… Read More »
Should You Divide Your Estate Equally Among Your Children?
When your children are little, you can only guess what they will be like as adults? Will the daughter who loves drawing grow up to use her excellent fine motor skills to cook elaborate family meals for holidays, and will she use her eye for details in a career as a forensic scientist, a… Read More »