Asset Protection: Selling Inherited House Inside a Trust
There’s an awful lot of an advantage to having a lifetime of asset protection, but is it work it? Should you keep the proceeds of an inherited house inside Mom’s trust? Does it provide asset protection from creditors, divorcing spouses, and disability/Medicaid spend downs? In this reaction and commentary on a Reddit question, Jeff reviews […]
The Bank Won’t Honor The Power of Attorney!
Unfortunately, there is a trend of banks and other financial institutions refusing to honor Powers of Attorney because they are not on the institution’s forms. This can cause a variety of complications if discovered after someone is incapacitated. But how can they do that? This video, recorded in Wyoming while there attending The Estate Planning […]
Is Your Suitcase Packed?
Revocable Living Trust Is your suitcase packed? When it comes to estate planning with a revocable living trust, I often use the suitcase analogy. When it comes to avoiding probate, a revocable living trust is like a suitcase. It is designed to take your things from one place to another, and there are many different […]
What is a Testamentary Trust?
A testamentary trust is basically language written into a Last Will and Testament that holds and manages estate assets for a beneficiary over a period of time beyond the probate estate being initially settled. Unfortunately, this has a lot of drawbacks depending on state law. A testamentary trust may mean that the beneficiary’s share has […]
Should I do a Will or Trust
This question of a will or trust comes up all of the time when it comes to estate planning. Unfortunately, many attorneys and other professionals try to cram and squish this very subjective square peg into an objective round hole with a sledgehammer. The fact is that there is no simple “one-size-fits-all” number answer to […]
Schedule A is Missing
You know a plan is broken into a thousand-piece puzzle when the pages of the trust were taken out of the binder, put back out of order, and some pages are missing. But what happens when the “all-important” (sarcasm inserted here) Schedule A is one of those missing pages? It turns out in California that […]
I Want a Revocable Living Trust
I Want a Revocable Living Trust… Do I Need a Will? “Well, if you have a Revocable Living Trust, don’t you also need a Will?” the other attorney asked. “Yeah, you need a Will,” I responded. “Ah ha!” the other attorney exclaimed as if he has just made some profound and overriding point to justify […]
Should I Make My Parents Trustees?
One of the most important decisions you can make in estate planning is choosing the right trustees. A frequent question that comes up when speaking with my clients who have younger children is whether or not to name their own parents as trustees. They often believe that naming someone older than them is not a […]
How Much Is An Estate Plan?
When approaching something new and unfamiliar, people tend to think of things like estate planning in the simplest terms possible. However, it’s not like going to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk where there may be some small differences, but by and large, there is not much of a price difference and […]
Unnecessary Trust Provisions
And One BIG Reason to Keep Them Anyway “But this doesn’t apply to us!” It’s common enough to see lots of language in trusts and other legal documents that are ‘boilerplate’ that should stay in anyway. In this blog, I review some of the most commonly questioned provisions and why they should be kept anyway, […]