The Good News is You’ll Live Longer…
Planning for retirement often requires a fine-tuned equation including such variables as where you plan to live, how many years you’ve worked and how much social security you can expect, health care expectations, long-term care, and especially your life expectancy. Well, part of that equation is about to change, because according to U.S. News and […]
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The Best Way to Help the Special People in Your Life
Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles often come into our offices to make estate plans, and one of the questions they ask is how they can support the people in their lives who have special needs. Special needs can include anything from Autism or Down Syndrome to Paralysis or blindness, and everything in between. Our clients […]
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Finances Are A Family Affair
We’ve all been learning a lot more lately about economics and investment practices than we ever thought we would… but do these lessons from the global economy transfer to the family circle? Studies have shown that most families have one person who takes care of all the finances: paying the bills, setting aside money for […]
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How to Keep Your Kids Out of the Wrong Hands
Some of the clients who come through our offices are parents and grandparents of small children whose primary goal in creating an estate plan is to protect those children. This includes providing for their immediate financial needs, ensuring they will have the means to receive an education, and so forth, but often the very first […]
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What is REALLY Behind a Contested Will?
Tolstoy said that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but sometimes even the most stable and happy of families can turn angry and litigious when death and property is involved. It never ceases to be surprising how many seemingly strong family relationships devolve into backbiting and grudge-holding […]
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In the News: What Does it Mean to Have a Health Care Directive?
There seems to be a lot of fear around President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms, most of that fear centering on the end-of-life planning included in the proposal. As a firm that deals with elder law issues, it is important to us that our clients be informed about their choices as to health care and end-of-life […]
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A Daytime Solution for Working Caregivers
I just returned from a week-long legal conference in Chicago. Several classes attended were focused on long term care planning and the available options. According to a study done by the AARP over 34 million people provide care to ill or disabled adults aged 50 or over, and with the aging baby boomer population (and […]
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Back to School: Emergency Contacts Lead to Thoughts of Guardianship
August is upon us, the summer is drawing to a close, and the school year is about to begin. For many parents this means it’s time to fill out the beginning of school paperwork again: health, release, and emergency contact forms. Although many parents look upon these forms as a time-consuming necessary evil, they can […]
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Mom Passed Away and I’m Her Executor… Now What?
Dealing with the death of a family member—especially when that family member is a parent—can be fraught with confusion and emotion even under the best of circumstances. Being named as the executor of the deceased’s estate (although often considered an honor) means that you have to have a clearer head and more patience than everyone […]
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A Living Will Is Good For You, Good For The Country
President Obama’s pet project of health care reform seems to have a lot of people worried. His talk of living wills encouraging people to specify their end-of-life wishes in particular are the topics bandied about most often in tense (or downright frightened) conversations. Some people seem to think that the very act of specifying your […]
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