Sometimes posts on law blogs can get a little esoteric. Every now and then it’s useful to go back to the beginning and set forth the documents that comprise a basic estate plan. Every single adult should have these in place, regardless of age, marital status, wealth, or whether they have children. Last Will and...
Estate Planning
One of the most common questions I get from people, especially the elderly, is whether they should transfer their home to their children or grandchildren now. Their thinking is that by transferring it now, it will avoid probate when they die, and also, they can avoid paying for more complicated estate planning. Of course, that’s not...
The biggest enemy of proper estate planning is procrastination. As the world knows, Prince died last week. Today we find out that he died intestate, which is a fancy word that lawyers use for dying without a will. When you die intestate, the state determines how your property is distributed. Prince was not married and...
As an estate planning attorney, I know how important what is known as “tangible personal property” is to people. Generally there are two types of property: real property and personal property. Real property is land and buildings, and personal property is everything else. That includes money, stocks, patents, digital assets, etc. When we talk about...
Today’s crazy estate planning story comes from the New York Times, He Left a Fortune, to No One. Roman Blum died in New York last year at 97 years old. He was a Holocaust survivor and a successful real estate developer worth over $40 million. Not only did he die intestate, which means without a...
I was at a networking event today, and I was talking with a guy in his twenties — healthy, unmarried, no children, minimal assets and minimal debt. He said he wanted to talk to me about me doing a “revocable living trust” for him. When I asked him why he thought he needed one, he...
In my previous post, I discussed why a Will is essential for almost everybody, so that a person can decide how his property is disposed of upon his death, instead of having the State decide for him, per a preset list of rules. And while planning for what happens after death is a large part...
I meet people all the time — single people, married people, with and without children who have none of their estate planning documents in place. There are a number of reasons as to why people don’t get their documents in order — worry about the cost is often a reason given (although it does not...