Today we talk about how long creditors can submit bills on an estate in probate… Imagine a scenario where you are personal representative of an estate. You do your best to accumulate all the bills, you talk to everyone who is entitled to get everything. You pay all the bills and distribute the assets and you think everything is good. A year goes by. Then, almost two years later you get a bill. It’s from the hospital, and it’s BIG….
Picking a trustee isn’t like choosing any other position within your estate plan. This person needs to have their stuff together. Here’s how to pick a good trustee… When people think about who will fill the roles within their estate plan they often immediately think of relatives. “My brother would definitely be a great power of attorney.” “My mother would be a perfect guardian.” But when it comes to being the trustee of your trust, you want to do a…
In this episode of the show we talk about how long probate takes… If you’ve had a loved one pass away and are facing the prospects of having to go through probate, it can seem pretty daunting. You probably googled around and saw answers ranging from 9 months to 10 years and you have no idea what the process is like, much less how long it actually takes to get through. Well, today I’m going to break down the timeline…
On this episode of the show we talk about the importance of identifying temporary guardians… Before we get started, an important note – technically temporary guardians don’t exist in Washington State. What I mean is, there is no statutory provision for appointing temporary guardians here. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to set up temporary guardians. First, they can be immensely important in those instances where something happens and the babysitter is the person in charge of figuring…
In this special rant episode of the show, I implore you… please don’t be selfish. Here’s the bottom line – don’t be selfish. As an estate planning lawyer I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t tell you what to think. I can’t tell you what’s best. What I can tell you is that taking no action at all, that making no decisions, is selfish, and it will cause a lot of pain and heartache with your family. Don’t…
On this episode of the show we talk about how home ownership effect Medicaid… I was at a happy hour the other day, and as is want to happen, people started asking me all kinds of estate planning and elder law questions once they found out I was an estate planning attorney. This particular set of questions was interesting to me and also scary, as I was listening to the things people were considering doing with home ownership and medicaid…
On this episode of the will I give you two ways to get a will out of a safety deposit box… Getting a will out of a safety deposit box may seem like an impossible task. You are hitting roadblock after roadblock. The bank is telling you no, you access the contents, even though you know the will you need to help with everything is inside of that safety deposit box. Today, I’m going to tell you how to get…
