We often remind people to make sure their estate plans are up-to-date. While a major life event will usually prompt a review of will and trust documents, what people sometimes forget is to check the designated beneficiaries of life insurance policies…
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Tabloids continue to speculate about the circumstances surrounding the January 2015 incident that led to Bobbi Kristina Brown’s death six months later. There are conspiracy theories that link her death with her mother’s — Whitney Ho…
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Power of attorney and the health care directive are two aspects of your will and estate plan that dictate who will make financial decisions on your behalf, and how you should be medically treated in case you are incapacitated (respectively). As you c…
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We are finishing up our discussion of the various ways a testator can change his or her will. There are codicils and separate writings, for example, that can amend or supplement an existing will. And, over the past couple of decades, technology has m…
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We cannot overstate the importance of having a sound estate plan. Remember, if you do not have a will, the state has one for you, and the state’s plan may be exactly what you do not want to happen to your property. The only way to make sure you…
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If we all lived in a Dickens novel, a funeral would be followed by a somber meeting of the deceased’s family members. A distinguished lawyer would be behind an enormous desk in a book-lined room, and the heirs — or likely heirs — wo…
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We talk about estate plans all the time, but it occurs to us that we have not really reviewed the individual components of an estate plan. This is definitely an a la carte menu: Personal circumstances dictate what any one person needs at any given ti…
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If you are done with your holiday shopping and wondering what to do with your time, you may want to pull out your estate plan to make sure everything in it and everything affecting it are up to date. Before your credit card bills come in, take a few…
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We are talking about life insurance and its place in an estate plan. As we explained in our Nov. 16 post, life insurance can be part of a retirement plan, too. If you own your own policy, and the policy is for permanent life insurance, you may be abl…
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A life insurance policy can be an important part of an estate plan for a few reasons. First, the payout is not counted as taxable income. Also, the payout processes more quickly than a lump sum bequest. While your personal representative goes through…
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