FEBRUARY 11, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 6 Last fall the Social Security Administration quietly released the text of changes to the Program Operations Manual System — the POMS. Though described as “clarifications” by Social Security, they were actually far-reaching changes that would have driven up the cost of trust administration, complicated the lives of beneficiaries…
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The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle: 10 Must-Have Conversations for Transition to the Second Half of Life
Review by Ann Mackey Kling, Las Vegas, Nevada Book by Roberta K. Taylor, RNCS, M.Ed., and Dorian Mintzer, M.S.W., Ph.D. This is a book about how to communicate with your partner regarding the important choices surrounding retirement to allow you both to make decisions that suit your needs, talents, resources and dreams. Its purpose is…
Review by Pamela Zimba, Oakland, California Book by Deborah L. Jacobs Among the many reasons that I like this book, is that it’s a combination of estate planning (EP) information and retirement planning (RP) information. The Table of Contents, which contains the listing of the 19 Chapters in the book, provides a brief description of…
FEBRUARY 4, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 5 Arizona adopted a version of the Uniform Trust Code in 2008, to be effective at the beginning of 2009. The UTC has been the subject of much discussion across the country — it has been adopted in about half the states, and soundly rejected in a few others.…
JANUARY 28, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 4 At Fleming & Curti, PLC, we don’t spend much time reading appellate decisions about divorce, property division and child support. That’s because we don’t practice family law, and there’s plenty to keep up with in our chosen realms of law. But a recent decision from the Arizona Court…
Review by Klark J. Perez, Orlando, Florida Book by Ernie J. Zielinski “The Joy of Not Working” is a must read in my opinion. It’s an easy enjoyable read that you may not want to put down once you start. At some point in life you may have been unemployed and you definitely should be…
JANUARY 21, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 3 Administering a “special needs” trust can be a challenge. The rules often seem vague, and they occasionally shift. What may seem like a simple question might actually involve layers of complexity. Sometimes an expenditure might be permissible under the rules of, say, the Social Security Administration, but not…
JANUARY 14, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 Congress acted (not just at the last minute, but after the last minute). The update to the estate tax provisions is permanent, or at least what passes for permanent in the world of taxes and politics. So does that mean you need to make changes to your estate…
JANUARY 7, 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 1 A recent blog entry from the Special Needs Alliance (two of our lawyers are members) addressed the common problems encountered when family members seek guardianship over someone with a mental illness. The very same day we received a call from a prospective client, asking if he could secure…
DECEMBER 31, 2012 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 47 The distribution date for this week’s Elder Law Issues newsletter is New Year’s Eve. Although we have been publishing this (more-or-less) weekly newsletter for 19 years, that has only happened twice before — in 2007 and 2001. In both of those instances we passed up a chance to…