Category: Estate Planning

The Titanic didn’t have enough lifeboats for all its passengers because the ship was “unsinkable.” The Mars orbiter was lost because some engineers used the metric system while others used the English system. Decca Records turned down the Beatles because they weren't sellable. No mistake you make will ever be a bad as...

The odds are good that you have read the book or saw the movie adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s coming-of-age classic has a perennial spot on summer reading lists, and in the hearts of many attorneys who view Atticus Finch as a fictional role model.When a follow-up, Go Set...

When Mary’s parents passed away, Mary inherited the house she grew up in. And everything in it. Figuring out what to do with her family’s “treasures” was more work, and more rewarding, then she could ever have imagined. Assisting her with the task gave our firm a crash course on archiving with an...

2017 was a big year in the art world. A Saudi prince bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for $450 million. And a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was bought by a Japanese collector for over $110 million, bumped Andy Warhol from the top spot on the list of most expensive American artists. It...

When President Trump was running for office, he vowed to get rid of the estate tax. The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” he signed into law in December doesn’t manage to do that, but it does make a few changes that will impact large estates.The...

There is no easy way to divide up money between family members because no matter what you do, someone is going to feel like they were treated unfairly. And that person’s complaints are going to make everyone else in the family as miserable as he or she is.Slate’s advice columnist, “Dear...

When Hugh Hefner, the famous founder of Playboy magazine, died, speculation about who would inherit his fortune immediately began. Now, some details have been released, and they are a bit shocking considering Hef was known as much for the parties he threw as his publishing prowess. According to ET, the trust Hefner set up to...

Little did Tammy Wynette know, she could have had another hit on her hands by doing a follow-up to her classic song D-I-V-O-R-C-E on post-divorce E-S-T-A-T-E P-L-A-N-N-I-N-G. Maybe not a Number 1, but it would probably be popular in legal circles. Maybe?Okay, it’s a stretch. But estate planning should come after...

“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” -Acts 20:35Like so many scripture lessons, this one grows more poignant as you get older. As a child,...

Have you ever sent an email that you hope your spouse never reads? If the answer is yes, you better make sure your estate plan includes instructions about who gets access to your digital assets when you die. This is a hot topic in the estate planning world right...