You are married. You have a couple of young, healthy children. You are still young yourself. Life is good. Why would you have to worry about estate planning? Isn’t that for when you die, or for people older than you? …
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Putting your Financial House in Order in April
If you haven’t heard already, April is National Financial Literacy Month. You should expect to hear more about financial and estate planning during this month. The goal of Financial Literacy Month is to “alert, educate, motivate and assist the American …
Reasons to do Estate Planning
As of January 2, 2013, the Federal estate and gift tax exemption amount has been permanently increased. If you pass away in 2013 and your lifetime and after-death transfers are under $5.125 million, your estate passes to your loved ones, …
Protecting Your Assets From Your New Spouse
You are single again after the death of your first spouse. Or maybe you are divorced. Now you have met someone and have fallen in love, again, and are getting married for the second, or third, time. You have accumulated …
How to Leave an Inheritance to your Spouse
If you are you married and you plan on leaving anything to your spouse when you are gone, you have lots of options. There are many ways to leave an inheritance to your spouse. If you are not currently or …
Recognizing the need for assistance
Things just aren’t the same anymore. Going up and down the stairs is a lot slower these days. Using a grabber is a lot easier to use than trying to bend down and pick things up off the floor. Going …
You May Be a Stockholder and Not Know It
You have had a life insurance policy for decades. It may even have been one of the infant policies taken out by your parents in the 1920s, 1930s or 1940s. Although I wasn’t around at the time, many of my …
How to Protect Your Property From Yourself
If you are like most people, you are concerned about what happens to your property and other stuff after you become “old and funny.” You have worked hard your entire life to accumulate what you have and you want to …
Children’s Accounts May Need to be Probated
In an attempt to do your own mini-estate plan and avoid probate, you may have set up and transferred funds to special accounts for the benefit of children, grandchildren or other relatives. These could be set up under the Uniform …
July Savvy Separate Trusts Offer More Benefits
For most of my married clients, I typically prepare separate trusts for each spouse instead of a joint trust for both spouses. I am occasionally asked why. The reason is very simple, it is what most of my clients want. …