Your estate plan usually includes a will, a health care power of attorney and a financial power of attorney. It might also include at least one trust — perhaps more if you have a child with special needs, or a complicated financial situation. Which is your most important document? You might also have partnership agreements,…
You’ve signed your will and powers of attorney. Maybe you’ve even signed a living trust. But now who should get copies of your will and trust? Is the answer different for your powers of attorney? What to do with the original documents First, let’s just say a word about what you should do with the…
We have written before about “trust protectors,” a relatively new concept in American trust law. Because there is not a lot of case law on the subject, the limits of a trust protector’s power (and duty) has not been well-established. Now a new California case fills in a little more detail. Trust protectors — a…
VOLUME 24 NUMBER 17 Even with regular prompting, about half of people never get around to completing even basic estate planning. If they never do get a will signed, we lawyers say that they have died “intestate”. But what does that really mean for their loved ones? Note that the information we provide here is…
VOLUME 24 NUMBER 12 You’ve done the thoughtful estate planning work we urged you to do. You signed your will, your powers of attorney — maybe you even created a living trust. Now what? Do you share your estate plan with your family? There is neither a requirement nor a prohibition — the decision about…
JANUARY 2, 2017 VOLUME 24 NUMBER 1 You probably know that it’s possible — though state laws vary quite a bit — to adopt an adult. But have you given any thought to what effect the adoption might have on inheritance rights? That’s the sort of problem that gets lawyers (and judges) excited. Two recent…
OCTOBER 19, 2015 VOLUME 22 NUMBER 38 Not every client we speak with wants to set up a trust for generations of descendants, but some do. The notion of allowing assets to grow for two or three (or more) generations can be attractive. It is difficult, of course, to imagine what one’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren…
SEPTEMBER 14, 2015 VOLUME 22 NUMBER 33 Once in a while we read an appellate court decision that nicely addresses a subject which isn’t the issue before the court. A recent Arizona Court of Appeals case illustrates this phenomenon nicely. The legal issue was technical and would appeal only to lawyers — and probably only…
JULY 27, 2015 VOLUME 22 NUMBER 27 Lawyers love to name and categorize everything they deal with. It’s a useful way to group similar concepts, but it can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. That’s particularly true when a legal concept is non-exclusive — in other words, when one instrument can go by a number of…
DECEMBER 15, 2014 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 45 From time to time we see appellate court decisions dealing with a common estate planning problem: after creation of a trust, changing title to assets is an essential element of completing the estate plan. Once in a while, as appears to be the case in this week’s court…