10 Common Estate Planning Mistakes Your Family Can't Afford to Make - Part 1

Because estate planning involves actively thinking about and planning for frightening topics like death, old age, and crippling disability, many people put it off or simply ignore it all together until it’s too late. Sadly, this unwillingness to face reality often creates serious hardship, expense, and trauma for those loved ones you leave behind.

To complicate matters, the recent proliferation of online estate planning document services, such as LegalZoom®, Rocket Lawyer®, and Trustandwill.com, may have misled you into thinking that estate planning is a do-it-yourself (DIY) affair, which involves nothing more than filling out the right legal forms. However, proper estate planning entails far more than filling out legal forms.

In fact, without a thorough understanding of how the legal process works upon your death or incapacity and applies specifically to your family dynamics and the nature of your assets, you’ll likely make serious mistakes when creating a DIY will or trust. And the worst part is that these mistakes won’t be discovered until you are gone—and the very people you were trying to protect will be the ones stuck cleaning up the mess you created just to save a few bucks.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerMarch 18, 2023Probate, Wills, Trusts, Family Wealth Inventory

Your Rights As The Parent Of A Young Adult — What You Need To Know When A Medical Crisis Hits

As a parent, you are quite accustomed to managing your children's legal and medical affairs, as circumstances require. If your child requires urgent medical attention while away from you, a simple phone call authorizing care can do the trick. But what happens when those “children” turn 18, now adults in the eyes of the law, and need urgent medical attention far from home?

The simple fact is that the day your child turns 18, he or she becomes an adult and has the legal rights of an adult. This means that you lose your prior held rights to make medical and financial decisions for your child unless your child executes legal documents giving you those rights back. Without the proper legal documents, accessing medical information and even being informed about your adult child’s medical condition can be difficult and in some cases, impossible.

Protect Your Aging Loved Ones From Undue Influence

Following the death of a loved one, close family members are sometimes surprised to learn that they didn’t receive the inheritance they were expecting, and that the deceased instead left most of their estate to an individual they only recently met, who wasn’t even a relative. While it’s not always the case, in some situations this can mean your loved one was taken advantage of by a bad actor, who manipulated him or her into cutting out close family members from their plan and leaving assets to the bad actor instead.

This is called "undue influence," and it’s not only unethical, it’s illegal and considered a form of elder abuse. Given the growing number of seniors, the prevalence of diminished capacity associated with aging, and the concentration of wealth among elderly Baby Boomers, we’re likely to see a serious surge in the number of cases involving undue influence in the coming years.

Undue influence can have a disastrous effect on your aging parents and other senior relatives’ estate planning. To this end, we encourage you and your family to be aware, educated, and empowered in knowing what risks are for your elderly loved ones — and for your future inheritance.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerMarch 10, 2023Incapacity, Undue Influence, Elder Abuse

Selling Real Estate or a Business? Avoid Capital Gains Tax With a Charitable Remainder Trust

If you have a sale of real estate or assets coming up that will result in you owing capital gains tax, you may want to give us a call to discuss whether to set up a Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) first. Think of it this way: would you rather pay taxes and send your hard-earned money to the government, or use that same money to provide yourself with a lifetime of income and support your favorite charity at the same time?

CRTs offer a number of benefits to everyone involved. These trusts allow you to contribute to your most beloved charities, while also generating a valuable extra source of income for the beneficiaries, which can assist with retirement, paying off taxes, or be used for additional estate planning purposes. Such trusts aren’t for everyone, so call us to see if a CRT fits in with your planning goals.

A charity, by the way, is defined as either a public charity or a private foundation, and this includes qualified organizations that are charitable, educational, religious, scientific, literary, athletic, or involving child or animal advocacy (and this includes churches and nonprofit schools, colleges, and educational institutions). To be qualified, the charity needs to meet requirements under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC).

Five Smart Ways to Cover Your Funeral Expenses That Won't Leave Your Family to Foot the Bill

With the cost of a funeral averaging between $7,000 and $12,000 and steadily increasing each year, at the very least your estate plan should include enough money to cover this final expense. But if you are thinking of simply setting aside money in your will to cover your funeral expenses, you should seriously reconsider, as paying for your funeral through your will can create unnecessary burdens for your loved ones.

Although you can leave money in your will to pay for your funeral expenses, your family won’t be able to access those funds until your estate goes through the court process of probate, which can last months or even years. And since most funeral providers require full payment upfront, your family will likely have to cover your funeral costs out of pocket. Moreover, your loved ones will have to deal with all of this while grieving your death.

If you want to avoid burdening your family with such a hefty bill and the stress that comes with it, you need to use estate planning strategies that do not require probate. While you should meet with our Personal Family Lawyer® to find the solution best suited for your unique situation, the following five options are among the most commonly used methods for covering funeral expenses without the necessity for probate.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death — Part 3

In part one and part two of this series, we covered the processes that Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and Apple offer to manage your digital accounts following your death. Here in part three, we’ll conclude this series by covering the most effective methods for including digital assets in your estate plan.

5 Steps For Including Digital Assets In Your Estate Plan

If you’re like most people, you likely own numerous digital assets, some of which may have significant monetary value, and others which have purely sentimental value. You may even have some digital assets that you’d prefer your family not access at all when you pass away.

To ensure these assets are managed in exactly the way you want, take the following five steps to include this digital property in your estate plan. While many of these tasks you can do yourself, you’ll definitely want to consult with our local Personal Family Lawyer® to ensure your estate plan is properly prepared and works exactly as you intend.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerMarch 2, 2023Digital Assets, Family Wealth Inventory

Estate Planning Checkup: 10 Questions to Determine If Your Estate Plan Is Up-To-Date

One of the underlying fundamental practices of any decent estate planning law firm is to educate clients on the vital importance of not only preparing an estate plan, but also keeping clients’ plans up-to-date. While you almost surely understand the importance of creating an estate plan, you may not know that keeping your plan current is every bit as important as creating a plan to begin with.

In fact, outside of not creating any estate plan at all, outdated estate plans are one of the most common estate planning mistakes we encounter. We’ll get called by the loved ones of someone who has become incapacitated or died with a plan that no longer works because it was not properly updated. Unfortunately, once something happens, it’s too late to adjust your plan, and the loved ones you leave behind will be stuck with the mess you’ve left, or they could end up in a costly and traumatic court process that can drag out for months or even years.

Estate planning is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done type of deal. To ensure your plan works properly, it should continuously evolve along with your life circumstances and other changing conditions. Regardless of who you are, your life will inevitably change: families change, assets change, laws change, and goals change.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death — Part 2

Yesterday, in part one of this series, we covered the processes that Facebook and Google have in place to manage your digital accounts following your death. Here in part two, we’ll continue our discussion, covering how Instagram, Twitter, and Apple’s collection of online platforms handle your accounts once you log off for the final time.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerMarch 1, 2023Digital Assets

Keep the Government and Lawsuit Happy Opportunists Away From Your Children’s Inheritance

If you have a current estate plan, we’ll bet you plan to leave your assets to your children outright and unprotected by age 35, or maybe a little later. Go take a look at your estate plan, and see what it does right now. And, if you don’t have an estate plan, and you have kids or other people you care about, contact us today and let’s get that handled for you.

If you do have a plan and it distributes your assets outright to your kids -- even in stages, over time, some at 25, then half of what’s left at 30, and balance at 35 (or something along those lines), you’ve overlooked an incredibly valuable gift you can give your children (and the rest of your descendants for generations); a gift that only you can give them. And a gift that, once you’ve died and left them their inheritance outright, is lost and cannot be reclaimed.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death — Part 1

If you have preferences about what happens to your digital footprint after your death, you need to take action. Otherwise, your online legacy will be determined for you—and not by you. If you have any online accounts, such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple, or Amazon, you have a digital legacy, and that legacy is yours to preserve or lose.

Following your death, unless you’ve planned ahead, some of your online accounts will survive indefinitely, while others automatically expire after a period of inactivity, and still, others have specific processes that let you give family and friends the ability to access and posthumously manage your accounts.

Because social media and other digital platforms are such a ubiquitous part of our daily routine, and they can offer intimate snapshots of your life, these digital assets can serve as a key part of your legacy—one you may want to protect after your death. Alternatively, you may prefer to keep your online history private and have it permanently deleted once you're gone.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerFebruary 28, 2023Digital Assets

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