Category: Estate Planning

Each generation lives through a number of events that its members will never forget. The older generation remembers Pearl Harbor and the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Boomers remember the day JFK was shot and the OJ Simpson murder case. Generation X vividly recalls 9/11. Each of these events defined the...

Taking care of all the “stuff” that a loved one leaves behind is a daunting task. It’s both emotionally draining and physically exhausting. From a legal perspective, the person in charge of sorting through all the stuff that a loved one leaves behind is the estate administrator named in the

Do you have a plan for paying for your long-term care? Most people do not, which limits one’s options and leads to poor choices. That’s why there are so many horror stories out there about seniors losing properties that have been in their family for years because they fell and broke a hip....

The tv commercials toting them aren’t as prevalent as they once were, but we still get a lot of questions about reverse mortgages from our estate planning clients. We’ve therefore put together this quick primer on them.What is a reverse mortgage?A reverse mortgage is exactly what it sounds like -...

The Frank Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life was recently on tv as part of some sort of “Christmas in July” promotion, and I happened to catch the part where mean old Mr. Potter suggests that George Bailey is worth more dead than alive because all he has to his name is...

Anthony Bourdain’s suicide left many of us shaken to the core. It is shockingly sad that someone so gifted, who seemed to have such a thirst for life, would want to give his up. His estate plan reflects what we as a public knew about him, and is a perfect example of why...

There are a lot of strange things you will have to do when a loved one dies, and handing out copies of their death certificate is one of them. You may need around 20 copies of your loved one’s death certificate in order to settle his or her estate.A death certificate is a...

Do you ever walk into another room to get something, and suddenly forget what that something is? Do you get confused and irritable when you are tired? Did you understand all of the fine print in the last contract you signed? Depending on how you answer these questions, someone might challenge your mental...

A few years ago, a young man came to our office asking for some legal advice. He had received a letter in the mail from an attorney informing him that his half-brother had passed away. He had not spoken to his brother in many years, and their father had already passed away, so...

If you didn’t know better, you might think that Memorial Day is all about heading to the beach, eating hotdogs, and scoring a good deal on a new mattress. Advertisers have taken what was once an opportunity to remember our deceased soldiers and our relatives who passed before us, and turned it into...