Mary hung up the phone and frowned. “That can’t be right,” she said. “What can’t be right?” her husband James asked. He put his newspaper down and gazed at her. “Janice says she heard from Darla who heard from Laura that the End of Life Option Act has been overturned. If that’s true, we are going to need to change…
This is another installment in our very occasional series on estate planning lessons learned from celebrities. The actress Nichelle Nichols, 85, who is most famous for portraying Lieutenant Uhura on the original “Star Trek,” is currently the subject of a conservatorship battle pending in Los Angeles Superior Court. Ms. Nichols’ son, Kyle Johnson, filed the petition for conservatorship in May…
As the average age of the U.S. population increases, more people are becoming aware of the benefits of having a general durable power of attorney (POA) to insure they have someone to assist them with financial matters when they are unable to act for themselves. Actually, the benefits of creating a POA apply to all walks of life, from the…
There are several kinds of disability income benefits available to a worker who becomes unable to work due to an injury or illness. This article focuses on private disability insurance policies or plans provided by employers that are governed by a federal law known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). Applying for long-term disability benefits under…
Here is an increasingly common scenario we see in our practice. One family member usually a child, begins assisting, then taking care of and possibly even living with, an elderly parent as the parent’s abilities decline with age. The other children in the family eye the arrangement with suspicion: Is our sister just sponging off of mom or, worse yet,…
We know lots of people don’t like to think or talk about dying. We can see how our own clients often put off doing their estate planning until something happens that they see as a wake-up call: a friend dies suddenly without a will, leaving a mess for the family; or our client has to serve as their parents’ estate…