Checks and Balances
Every once in a while we’ll hear a story about a family for whom a trust was more of a hindrance than a help. Most often it’s because the trust was not created properly, or was old and outdated and hadn’t been reviewed by the grantors on a regular basis. But sometimes the conflict is […]
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Give the Gift of Peace of Mind
The holidays are the perfect time for family reunions, family bonding, family fun …and, according to the Wall Street Journal the perfect time for parents and children to talk about family finances, family estate plans, and family decisions about end-of-life issues. After all, there are relatively few times each year in the lives of most […]
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Should You Be Responsible For Your Parents’ Care?
Jane Gross over at the New Old Age Blog recently wrote a post about the prospect of enforced filial responsibility. Filial responsibility laws are patterned after Elizabethan Poor Laws and state that adult children are responsible for the basic needs of their parents, just as you would be for the basic needs of your spouse […]
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Are There No Prisons? Are There No Workhouses?
Individuals with mental illnesses already have a number of unique challenges to face, and now Time Magazine tells us they have one more terrifying prospect, because, according to Time’s recent article by Kate Torgovnick “on average, people with severe mental illness die 25 years younger than the rest of the population.” There are many contributing […]
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Forced Divorce for Seniors?
Growing old alone can be tough, but it might be what many of our parents and grandparents will be forced to do in order to protect their assets and still qualify for Medicare. In her article Caring for Aging Loved Ones Can Be a Catch-22, journalist Gail Sheehy describes how she learned the hard way […]
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Special Needs Awareness Is A Benefit To All
Our blog posts this week have focused on how the upcoming election could impact your assets and estate plan, and with our final post of the week it seems prudent to address the impact of the election on special needs families as well. After Sarah Palin’s speech in Pennsylvania on October 24, there seems to […]
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To Tax Or Not To Tax, That Is The Question
One of the things that will be determined by the outcome of the election on Tuesday, and which will have a huge impact on our firm—and on our clients—is the fate of the estate tax. As it stands, the estate tax will be repealed in 2010 and reinstated again in 2011. However, both presidential candidates […]
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Remember to Vote
We talk a lot about taxes on this blog—as well as health care and retirement issues—but what if we could look into the future and tell you what all of these issues would look like four years from now? You’d want to know, wouldn’t you? Well, we can’t tell you for sure what our […]
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Aging in America — Tune In For Answers
If you are a Baby Boomer you have it rough these days. Not only are you trying to plan for your own retirement and old age in a deteriorating economy, but it’s likely you have to plan for your parents’ retirement and old age as well. (In fact, some of you are your parents’ plan […]
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A Trust Provides Reassurance for You And Your Beneficiaries
Do you know what is going to happen to your assets after you die? Even if you have created a Last Will and Testament you may not be able to answer “yes” to that question. Widow Margaret Amrich thought she was ensuring the answer when she created her Will, a thought in which she was […]
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