Key Milestones for Planning Your Retirement

Retirement is not just the time in life when you will be doing nothing. It is not even a period that you can choose to skip because you plan to keep working. Many individuals work full-time during their retirement years, but they still take advantage of tax and financial opportunities because of their age. Indeed, the wise and prudent adult views retirement as the last 3-4 decades of their life. It is a period where the statistical probability of injury, health problems, and illness is high, even for healthy and physically active adults. It is a period where the statistical probability of your wanting to access savings in order to provide for and help those whom you love most is practically certain.

Even if you continue working, it is also a period where those who you love will likely have days, weeks, or months where they will need you to take time off work to be there for them. Planning for retirement, even while you are in your college years, is the practice of a good and responsible family member and friend. But the road to retirement is a long one, and as with any journey, it helps to have a few key milestones along the way to help gauge your progress. While your individual retirement plan and goals will be unique to your income, family situation, and desired lifestyle, most Americans share a number of common retirement milestones.

10 Common Estate Planning Mistakes Your Family Can't Afford to Make - Part 2

Part of creating any family involves, for every responsible adult, creating a financial plan and a legal plan. Whether your family is new or old, maintaining stability and security are a part of how you protect those you love most. Everyone needs to manage their finances well. And everyone needs an estate plan that avoids the most common pitfalls made by those who are not well informed.

Estate planning is definitely not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Even if you think your particular situation is simple, that turns out to almost never be the case. To demonstrate just how complicated estate planning can be, last week in part one, we highlighted the first five of 10 of the most common estate-planning mistakes, and here we wrap up the list with the remaining five mistakes.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerMarch 20, 2023Beneficiary Designations, Trusts, Guardianships, Trustees

How Creating A Life & Legacy Plan With Us Creates And Preserves Your Family's Legacy

When you think about loved ones who’ve passed away, you probably don’t think very much—or even at all—about the “things” they’ve left you. And when they do leave something behind, what you likely cherish most about the object are the memories and feelings the item evokes, not the thing itself.

For the founder and CEO of New Law Business Model, Ali Katz, the most treasured memento her late father left her wasn’t even something he intended to be special — it was just a random voicemail on her cellphone. And the message wasn’t meant to be anything sentimental.

His message simply said, “Lex, it’s your dad. Call me back.”

Following his death, Ali loved listening to that message to hear her father’s voice. Of all the assets he left behind, that tiny voicemail was what she cherished most.

Until one day, she went to listen to the message and discovered it had been erased — and her father’s voice was lost to her forever. She still recalls that day as one of her worst ever. Yet like most painful events, it taught her an important lesson.

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.

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