Probate Attorney Blog

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…

On this episode of the show I talk about the one place you do NOT want to store your will… I’ve done will signing after will signing after will signing. At the end of each session, I always ask my clients, “Now that we’re done, what are you going to do with your estate planning documents? Where are you going to store your will?” The answers vary, but more often than not I hear people tell me they are going…

On this episode of the show I talk about the only way to appoint guardians for your kids (and it’s not what you are thinking)… A note on a paper napkin. A form purchased off the internet. Instructions to a loved one. I’ve heard of these and many more ways that people believed they were appointing the guardians of their children if anything ever happened to them. But the fact is there is only one legal way to appoint a…

I was at an event thrown by some financial planners the other day and the topic presented was gifting. The talk itself centered on the importance of gifting and giving to charity and the joy it can bring the person doing the giving, with just a little bit of talk about tax savings strategies, and more specifically how to avoid estate tax while giving. I wanted to expound on that just a little bit today, as the end of 2016…

I was having a meeting with a potential client the other day and he told me an interesting story. He was asking me about the benefits and consequences of using a service like Legal Zoom to prepare estate planning documents. I told him what I think is the truth, “they are terrible,” I said. “But they are the right fit for some people.” At that point we kind of moved on in our conversation to other things. Eventually we swung…