Life Insurance Tips
The coronavirus pandemic has made us reevaluate our mortality, and consider if we were to perish, how our loved ones will be cared for. Life insurance can be an affordable way to provide for our children, a spouse, a sibling, aging parents, and other loved ones. Life insurance can provide heirs numerous benefits: extra income […]
A List of Bad Reasons to Put Off Estate Planning
My family and I don’t own much. Can’t we put off planning until we can afford it? You shouldn’t. It is crucial to give legal authority to a person of your choice, to care for your children if anything should happen to you. You don’t want your children to become wards of the court, […]
Consequences of Undue Influence
Unfortunately, our loved ones become old, become ill, and become vulnerable from fraud and theft. Targeted attacks on vulnerable older people to exert what attorneys deem “undue influence” constitutes elder abuse. It disrupts the older persons’ impulse to provide for loved ones and instead leaves assets to the manipulator. Often, family members do not find […]
Disinheriting Your Child Could be Costly
Although it’s more common to leave your estate equally distributed to your children, sometimes parents intentionally choose to not leave anything to a child, and the reasons for doing so may vary. One reason could be that a child who is more financially successful than the others and the parent doesn’t feel it’s necessary to […]
The Difference Between Elder Law and Estate Planning
Many people wonder what the difference between estate planning and elder law is. The short answer: Both share similar concerns. The longer answer? The differences make all the difference. The Concerns are Similar No matter what age we’re in, life can deliver some hard knocks. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. We […]
End of Life Planning to Convey Wishes
As lawyers, we prepare powers-of-attorney documents so that when our clients can no longer act for themselves, the documents will convey on other trusted people the authority to act on our clients’ behalf. But when it comes to actually using those documents at the time of a health-care crisis, clear and powerful documents are just […]
Essential Things to Understand About Estate Planning
Estate planning may sound like the domain of the very wealthy, however, in the eyes of the law, an estate is simply the aggregate of property an individual owns, and most everyone owns something. Property ownership includes individual as well as jointly owned bank accounts, stocks and bonds, retirement accounts, real estate, jewelry, vehicles, your […]
How an Elder law attorney Can Help You
Elder law encompasses a wide range of legal matters affecting an older or disabled person. An elder law attorney or certified elder law attorney (CELA) specializes as a legal advocate for aging adults and their loved ones Issues related to guardianship, retirement, health care including advance directives, long term care planning, Social Security, Medicare and […]
What It Means To Be a “Fiduciary”
One day, someone you love may ask you to be a power of attorney. Your person may be planning for when they might become unable to take care of their affairs. For example, they might become disabled or incapacitated, and they would need a trusted person to step in and manage for them. This is […]
Knowing The Difference Between a Will and a Trust
Trusts and Wills have specific and quite different benefits for estate planning purposes. Each state has specific laws and regulations governing these legal documents. You can have both a will and a trust; however, the information in each should compliment the other. As a standalone, it is not accurate to say one is better than […]