Estate planning is about more than preparing for the inevitable. A good estate plan should also consider the unexpected. Your plan may have detailed instructions for what happens when you are no longer around, but what if something goes wrong while you are still alive? If you can no longer manage your affairs, you will need […]
Bankruptcy may be one of the last things on your mind when you are creating an estate plan. Fortunately, the number of bankruptcy filings has declined over the past several years, but there were still a whopping 544,463 bankruptcy filings in 2020.[1] What happens to your estate if you file for bankruptcy protection but die while […]
Parents strive to make their children feel equally valued as reflected in the fact that, when setting up an estate plan, parents typically divide their accounts and property equally among their children. But while parents strive to treat their children the same, they simultaneously acknowledge that children have different needs at different times. And these needs […]
Mortality it a touchy subject. No one likes thinking about when they’re going to die. They like contemplating the death of their spouse, or how their spouse and children will cope with their own death even less. This can be an especially touchy subject when young couples are building an estate plan together. The thought their […]
Wills and trusts are the two basic legal instruments that people use to pass accounts and property on to their loved ones at death. Although a revocable living trust is often used in place of a will, the two are not mutually exclusive. You can have both a will and a trust, and in fact, a […]
When using trusts in estate planning, a key element includes transferring the trustmaker’s real estate into the trust by recording a real estate deed with the local recording authority. This step is crucial for ensuring that the trustee has the authority to manage and ultimately sell or transfer the property should the trustmaker become incapacitated or […]
Nothing lasts forever. While trusts can stretch across generations and keep valuable money and property within a family, no trust has unlimited funds or an interminable time horizon. Every trust, at some point, will end. The reasons why a trust might terminate can vary, but in general, termination occurs because the trust has accomplished its purpose. Meaning, […]
In the world of estate planning, you may come across the acronym HEMS from time to time. HEMS stands for “health, education, maintenance, or support” and is frequently included in trust agreements to guide a trustee on the types of distributions they may make to a trust beneficiary. When a trustee is limited to this type […]
