Estate Planning Resources
Practical guidance on wills, trusts, probate, business succession planning, and protecting the people and businesses you care about most.
Considerations with Co-Trustees
Considerations with Appointing Co-Trustees Nearly every person that is designing their estate plan will wrestle with questions of who should be appointed the successor trustee or personal representative (the person who will be in charge of distribution after the plan-maker(s) are dead) and how many people should serve in that [...]
Estate Planning Agents Questions and Answers
Who And How Many? When it comes to Estate Planning, you have a lot of decisions to make. The obvious ones are what are you going to do with your assets and the disposition of your remains when you die. Another major part of the decisions will revolve around who [...]
What Went Wrong?
Recently I received an email from a client asking me what went wrong in her parent’s estate plan so as to make it so that they had to go through probate. She asked, “isn’t the purpose of getting a trust so you don’t have to go through probate? Everyone tells [...]
How Not To Draft Contracts
Recently, a client wanted me to look over a "right to cancel" clause for the installation of energy saving feature for his home. My client is a smart person and typically doesn't have any problems in reading/understanding contracts or "legalese". He emailed me the following two paragraphs: 11. NOTICE OF [...]
The Hardest Part of Estate Planning
Our firm never says that estate planning is easy, the degree of intellectual rigor and self-reflection is often misunderstood by those who are doing it their first time. There are several “decision makers” in an estate plan. These are people who will fill various roles in the event of the [...]
Trouble in Far-Far Away
Coincidentally or not, when I visited Mr. Visser's class on constitution day the Kingdom of Far-Far-Away was in an upheaval over the trial the century. Cinderella's Step Sisters finally had to face the music for their alleged mistreatment of Cinderella. It all started when the prince, heard of the abuse [...]
Why Not Just Do It Yourself?
Why Should I Hire You? Recently, I had a wonderful family in my office. We talked about estate planning, the difference between a will and trust, and the importance of planning ahead. After our discussion, the mother turned to me and said, "excuse me for the question, but why should [...]
Thank You Sharry for your Example
Late Thursday afternoon, one of Lindsay's (my wife) best friends from childhood called me as I was getting home from work. I had just pulled into the driveway and when I saw the caller ID. I was surprised. Sure, I knew and liked my wife's friend, but she doesn't call [...]
Your Kids Might be Headed for Foster Care and you don’t even know it.
Lately I have been getting several people telling me something like this, “I don’t have much in the way of assets or money, so do I even need to worry about estate planning?” This post aims to answer that question for parents. Parents need a plan for both death and [...]