When a spouse dies, the estate plan you built together keeps going, but it was designed for two people. Now it needs to work for one. The first weeks after a loss bring a long list of urgent tasks. Updating your estate plan is not typically one of them, at least not right away. This post picks up after that…
When people think about an estate plan, they usually think about the trust itself: who serves as trustee, who inherits and when, how the house is titled. Those are the right questions. But one asset often sits outside that conversation: life insurance, and specifically, who is named as its beneficiary. Many people bought a policy years ago, filled out a…
You have heard the common estate planner saying, “make sure your beneficiary designation forms are filled out!” Yet, one of the most critical and often overlooked aspects of the estate planning process is properly filling out a beneficiary designation form after creating an estate plan. Beneficiary designation forms are filled out for retirement accounts like 401(k)s, IRAs, and even pensions…
For this four-part series, we are discussing very common scenarios that we see in our trust administrations where real estate is involved. Real estate, particularly the family home, often has emotional and sentimental components that can throw a wrench in trust administrations. Beneficiaries often have conflicting ideas of what to do with the family home. We will continue using the…
Effective January 1, 2022, California Probate Code Sections 15800 and 16069 are amended by Assembly Bill 1079. The change in law affects Trustees who assume their role when the settlor or trustor (the creator of the trust) becomes incapacitated. Typically, the person or persons who create a revocable living trust hold the power to be able to revoke the trust.…