Estate Planning, Probate, Power of Attorney Blogs & More

• Posted in: General interest

Sadly, a few of our clients have recently passed away.  “The death of a loved one imposes cruel demands on the closest survivors.” The truth of that statement from this article in moneywatch.com is known to anybody who has lost a close friend or family member. We’ve written a lot on our blog about going […]

• Posted in: Current Affairs

An interesting article in this week’s Time Magazine online addresses some of the weaknesses in the Durable Power of Attorney (POA) document—especially as regards the elderly—and how New York State is addressing these weaknesses. If New York’s experience with the beefed-up POA is favorable it is quite possible that other states will adopt similar changes. […]

• Posted in: Estate Planning

When clients come into our office to design their estate plans one of their biggest concerns is how to dispose of their tangible personal property. Sometimes clients spend more time determining how to dispose of these personal mementos than they do the big ticket items such as bank accounts, real property, and investments. This is […]

• Posted in: Estate Planning

Schoolchildren aren’t the only ones putting their noses back to the grindstone after this warm summer and long Labor Day weekend; Congress is also returning to work, and among the many issues they will be discussing is that of the estate tax, which is set to expire for a year in 2010. According to The […]

• Posted in: Estate Planning

The subject of inheritance is one that most people studiously avoid for a number of different reasons: superstition, fear, lack of knowledge, or—as this article by Gordon Powers points out—they don’t want to appear greedy. Furthermore, many older adults were raised to believe that money was a private affair, and that talking about it was […]

• Posted in: Current Affairs

While I was up in the San Francisco Bay Area last week, I sat and watched the moving memorial of Senator Ted Kennedy.  Whether you agreed with his politics, the recent death of Ted Kennedy has given us an opportunity to reflect on the unique nature of trusts not only as a tool to protect […]

• Posted in: Probate

We acquire so many assets over the course of our lives now—bank accounts, stocks, real property, life insurance, retirement, and more—it’s sometimes confusing to know what has to go through probate and what doesn’t. The answer to the question above is: life insurance and retirement benefits do not have to go through probate if the […]

• Posted in: Elder Law

A recent study about how divorce may affect your health has been making the rounds in the news sources lately. This article discusses how the added stress of divorce, family upheaval, and tighter finances can be so detrimental to your health that the effects can last years into the future. Because our law firm works […]

• Posted in: Estate Planning

What is your estate plan all about? Is it about saving your assets from estate tax, or is it about leaving an inheritance for your children? Or is it something even beyond that—providing for your own financial security during your life, thus enabling you to leave a lasting legacy for your family? Estate planning—or what […]

• Posted in: Probate

For a subject with which everybody is at least peripherally familiar, probate can turn confusing and frightening when you are forced to become intimately acquainted with it. As a beneficiary, probate can be lengthy, expensive and frustrating; but if you have been named as executor, probate can suddenly become an overwhelming maze of deadlines, notifications […]