Hello!

I hope you are having an amazing Sunday. I’m sure I’m going to even though it’s not yet Sunday as I’m writing this. :)

If you’ve been around for a while you know I periodically send out newsletters – well, that’s about to change.

I’ve actually sat down and thought about what I might want to say here and planned it out so every week you’ll (hopefully) get a lot of value from the time you spend reading this.

Starting in November, each month will have a theme. These are the themes I’ve come up with (in no particular order, yet):

Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts
Revocable Trusts
Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILIT)
Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLAT)
Estate Taxes
Foundational Planning
Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRT)
Bad Decisions
Asset Protection
Children
Probate Avoidance
The Philosophy of Estate Planning

Hopefully each month you’ll be armed with a little more knowledge to protect yourself, your family, and future generations, or, at the very least, you’ll have a lot of random knowledge to use at parties. :)

In the meantime, how about a story of how poor planning can go wrong… (obvi the names and facts have been changed – so if you think it’s you I’m talking about, it’s definitely not).

Here we go…

Husband and wife, married for 10 years. Husband and Wife both have children from a prior relationship. Wife dies with no plan because they assumed everything would go to surviving spouse. Husband assumes everything is great and he can continue on as is, and the kids can worry about how to split everything up when he’s gone.

But there’s a problem…

When Husband got married he moved into Wife’s house, who had inherited it from a wealthy uncle several years earlier.

Soon after Wife’s death, Husband gets a notice of probate proceedings from Wife’s daughter, who lets Husband know since Wife’s house was separate property (obtained via inheritance) and there was no Will, half the house is technically now Daughter’s.

Husband does a little digging and finds out his worst fears have come true – all of the separate property of Wife is split 50/50 with Daughter…

Hopefully not too much of a bummer on this Sunday – but things like this happen all the time.

Moral of the story – make sure you know FOR SURE how things work.

Have a great week!

Cheers,

Christopher Small
CMS Law Firm LLC

PS – don’t keep this estate planning stuff to yourself – you know it’s important and we LOVE referrals!

PPS – note for CLIENTS – our office will be CLOSED December 25-January 1. If you are planning on waiting until the end of the year to get started or get done, don’t wait too much longer!