Probate Attorney Blog

5 thoughts on Q1 2026. Can you believe 25% of 2026 is already in the books? Time flies when you’re having fun I guess. I love taking a few minutes at the end of each quarter to both look back on our progress and look ahead to what we’re working on. I thought I’d share 5 thoughts related to that with you. 1. Being a team member down is HARD. If you didn’t know, one of the attorneys here at…

As I’m sure you heard, the WA state legislature this week passed what is being called the “Millionaire’s Tax.” It is a tax of 9.9% on all income over a million dollars earned in a year. Apparently that affects about 30,000 people in the state every year (maybe someday we’ll be one of them!). I thought it would be fun to give you 3 of my initial thoughts on this new tax (as apolitical as possible, just FYI – my…

Today is kind of a public service announcement wrapped in a story. The firm is serving as the executor for an estate. Part of the estate was a safety deposit box. Because we could not find a Will, and we could not get into the safety deposit box (they are VERY safe), we had to get a court order to open the safety box to see if the Will was inside of it (it wasn’t). Once we knew there was…

This week I wanted to take a break from the estate planning talk and focus on something we can always improve – mindset. The way you approach your life has a much greater impact on you than your estate plan. I was listening to a podcast this week and an interesting perspective was brought up. “You should talk to yourself like your GPS does,” he said. “When you plug a destination into the GPS and miss a turn, it doesn’t…

Before we get into this week’s newsletter, we have 2 important announcements: 1. Liz had her baby! Baby and mom are healthy and looking forward to getting to know each other. This, of course, means she’s going to be out of the office for a bit. No worries though, if you are currently working with Liz we’ve got you covered (you can still email her and it will get to the right person). 2. Successful Q1 Client Care Lunch &…

People often think there’s an asset threshold that determines whether or not one should have a revocable living trust. I don’t think that’s true, though. What is “a lot” to one person might not be to another, so to try to place a number on when one should create a trust is imprecise. There is an easy way to tell if you need a trust though – just think about whether or not you need to do one of these…

Brooke and I snuck away from cold (but sunny!) Seattle this weekend to enjoy the sun and warmth of Cabo San Lucas, and while here (I’m technically still here) I picked up a book called The Art of Spending Money that was so good and so relevant I thought I’d talk about it here in the newsletter. Before I get to that though, a quick announcement. For those of you in the Client Care Program our first quarterly lunch and…