The advance health care directive is one of the most crucial estate planning documents that you can create for yourself. This document gives someone you choose (“agent”) the power to manage your medical and health care affairs if you become incapacitated or mentally impaired. It is a position of maximum trust. If you plan to appoint someone as your agent,…
The power of attorney is one of the most important documents that you can create for yourself. It gives someone you choose (“agent”) the power to manage your financial affairs if you become incapacitated or mentally impaired. It is a position of highest trust and choosing your agent should be a very thought-out decision. It should be someone you that…
The recent mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 and other recent airline disasters has raised any number of legal issues that may take years to resolve. First and foremost, you wonder how many passengers on that flight had any kind of estate documents – wills, trusts, etc. Some of the passengers were not of Malaysian descent so those…
Were you aware that there are about 75 million people in the United States with disabilities? That’s about 25% of the population! Did you know that 53% of disabled people are over the age of 50? The U.S. Census Bureau has labeled disabled Americans the country’s largest minority population. Consider this story from a recent New York Times article: According to…
If you are over the age of 50, chances are that someone in your family or friend has been struck by a debilitating disease. Some of the most debilitating diseases in the U.S. include rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, muscular dystrophy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, Alzheimer’s and…
Celebrities are very influential in life. They can also be very prominent in death when their estate plans draw public scrutiny and criticism. Just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t mean they have executed the ‘perfect’ estate plan. More often than not, their estate plans are imperfect and wind up in prolonged litigation. Here are some lessons from recent…
Looting an elderly person’s estate is not as isolated as you may think. There have been many newspaper articles about estate looting. For example, back in 2009, Anthony D. Marshall, the 85-year-old son of Brooke Astor, the wealthy New York socialite who died in 2007, was sentenced to prison for raiding money from his mother’s estate that was earmarked for…
Heirs who are beneficiaries often think that soon after a family member or other relative dies their inheritance check will be in the mail fairly quickly. That usually does not happen. Trust administration is not something that can be accomplished quickly, and if probate is necessary this process can last significantly longer, nine to twelve months or more. After the…
It is not that uncommon for relatively younger children to receive large sums of money and property from their parents’ estate. This may or may not be a good idea in some situations. If both parents or a surviving parent dies, what kind of restrictions should be placed on an inheritance? The question is more acute if a child has…
We live today in more of a ‘do-it-yourself’ world and that goes for legal topics as well. It started with an avalanche of self-help legal books. Then the law became much more ‘form driven’ whereby one plugs information into online forms and/or templates and prints them out for filing or files them online. Add to that the large number of…