New Website May Help Caregivers Breathe a Sigh of Relief
If you provide care for an elderly relative or a special needs child you know how much work is involved in just getting away for an afternoon or evening, let alone planning for their care if you were to pass away. First you have to find a caregiver qualified to handle your charge’s more demanding […]
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There’s No Place Like Home
The decision to place a loved one in a nursing home (or the decision to leave your own home and move to a nursing facility, if you are making the decision yourself) can be one of the most difficult and harrowing decisions we ever make. Stories about disreputable facilities where seniors are neglected or abused […]
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Internet Tools to Improve Your Personal Finances
The realm of personal finance is in the midst of being revolutionized. The crash on Wall Street has made many armchair investors mistrustful of professional financial advice, and many people are now taking the time to manage their own personal finances with the focus shifted from investing and earning to budgeting and saving. The problem […]
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The Best Gift for Aging Parents is… a Computer?
We love our technology; cell phone, laptop, wi-fi, Kindle, iPod—all of these things keep us socially connected, culturally informed, and satisfy our growing need for instant gratification. But there is an assumption that this technological savvy and appreciation stops once you reach a certain age. We expect teens, twenty and thirty-somethings, and baby-boomers to be […]
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The Wall Street Journal: Every Child Deserves a Little Trust
If you’ve been weighing the pros and cons of setting up a trust for your young child, wondering if you really have enough assets to warrant such an expense, you must read Stacey L. Bradford’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Deciding if Your Kid Is Trust-Worthy”. In her article Bradford explains why […]
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Your “Family Law Firm”
We write a lot on our blog about the separate “pieces” of an estate plan, the unique financial challenges facing adults these days, or each of the many individual concerns we face in the course of keeping up with the present and planning for the future; but today we want to look at the big […]
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Unattended Life Insurance Policies Can Subvert the Best Laid Estate Plans
Many people count on life insurance to pay their estate tax when they pass away (allowing their heirs to keep non-liquid assets such as real estate without having to sell immediately), and this has always been a fairly safe and reliable strategy—as long as you’re keeping track of your policy. Arden Dale’s article in the […]
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You Ought to Be in Pictures: When and How to Create a Video Will
The process of creating a last will and testament hasn’t changed much over the centuries, and the requirements are few: Paper, pen, witnesses, and a testator who is of sound mind. This endurance and simplicity is one of the hallmarks of estate planning—and yet there are plenty of ways to incorporate technology into our practices […]
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How Well Do You Know Your Power of Attorney?
Imagine for a moment that you (or you and your spouse) are in a car accident, knocked on the head, and suffer brain injuries great enough to put you into a coma for 2 weeks and require a full seven months of nursing and rehabilitative care. Thankfully, you make a full recovery of all your […]
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When Should I Update My Estate Plan?
As an estate planning attorney, I often get asked the following question: “when should I review and update my estate plan?” Well, you may think that you are one of the smart ones: You already have an estate plan that you and your spouse created back in 1996; it’s sitting snugly in a safety deposit […]
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