Recent Blog Posts
The Dangers of Joint Ownership As An Estate Planning Strategy
Estate planning does not consist of a single, uniform goal or strategy. Instead, estate planning exists on a spectrum, with a simple will on one end and a comprehensive and interconnected series of documents and/or entities on the other. But as this recent article in Forbes points out, joint ownership by itself does not… Read More »
How Does Your State Rank on the Long-Term Care Scorecard?
One of the primary concerns of the aging population is long-term care. As the life expectancy of Americans goes up so does the expectation that they will someday need some form of long-term care. You may not know whether that care will happen in a hospital, a nursing home, or in your own home,… Read More »
Leaving an Inheritance to a Special Needs Child
If you have a child with special needs, planning your estate takes on a whole new dimension; especially, as this article in Forbes points out, now that “state and local governments are tightening income restrictions for medical benefits and supportive services, which are typically paid for by Social Security and Medicaid. Those services are… Read More »
Make Your Estate Plan a Masterpiece
A recent article in Forbes has shed light on a fact that estate planners have always known: There is far more to creating a good estate plan than just drafting the documents. In fact, according to the article, there is a fine art to putting together a good estate plan. “Estates are often shrouded… Read More »
An Inside Look at Retirement and Long-Term Care
What can we expect from our retirement years? We have financial advisors to help us look ahead and plan, but sometimes financial advisors can only take us so far; how does retirement look to someone who has been there? The author of this article in Reuters writes that she learned quite a bit about… Read More »
Should Beneficiaries Also Serve as Executor or Trustee?
When someone creates a will or a trust of course they want to choose a dependable and trustworthy person as executor or trustee. For most people this means someone close to them—a family member or friend, or often the most responsible of their adult children. However, this often means that the person they’ve chosen… Read More »
Some Tax Saving Strategies from the Wall Street Journal
Income, estate, and other federal tax levies have commonly been a bone of contention between those with different political ideologies; but the current conflict has reached unusual heights, with various million- and billionaires publicly expressing their views (pro or against) about current tax laws. Of course, million- or billionaires aren’t the only ones with… Read More »
Don’t Let Tax Laws Limit Your Generosity
The past two years have been tough on the average American family. The economy has been floundering and the unemployment rate has been hovering around 9-10% since 2009, not to mention the roller coaster ride we’ve all been through with the stock market. But through it all some families and individuals have fared better… Read More »
Executors of 2010 Estates Have Until Nov. 15 to Make Estate Tax Decisions
Everyone will remember the “wonderful boon” that was the 2010 estate tax repeal, which (in theory) allowed decedents to pass on their assets free of any estate taxes. However, the situation was complicated in December of 2010 when, as this article in Bloomberg puts it, “Congress extended the tax retroactively [giving] executors of estates… Read More »
Unusual Things Happen Every Day…
In a recent article in the Huffington Post financial columnist Don McNay tells the frustrating, sad, and “unusual” story of how the greater part of his mother’s and his sister’s estates ended up in the hands of people they would never have chosen to receive it… all because neither of them had a will… Read More »