You’re Never Too Young to Start Your New York Estate Plan
It is fairly typical for young adults, even those with professional careers aged thirty or more, to believe they are too young to concern themselves with estate planning. Young adults in their twenties and thirties often think they don’t own enough to constitute an estate. However, an estate is the total of all you own […]
Is Your New York Estate Plan Updated?
To make sure they’re still good, you should check your estate planning documents every so often, especially with big life changes like births, marriages, divorces, and moving to another state. Children grow up, marriages dissolve, property gets sold, residences change. That’s why we recommend that you consult us for an estate-plan check-up every five years […]
Power of Attorney: Roles & Responsibilities
Appointing a power of attorney is essential when planning for the possibility that you may become incapacitated and need a trusted agent to manage your affairs. The power of attorney legal documents can grant broad authority to one or more agents to transact business or make medical decisions based on your behalf. What are the […]
Estate Planning Is Essential to Being Prepared
It makes sense that more aging Americans have completed wills and estate plans compared to younger Americans. Still, a significant number — 19 percent of those over age 72 and 42 percent of those between 53 and 71, according to survey data — lack any type of estate plan. Although managing these details can seem […]
Be Prepared When Crisis Hits
Many Americans have been left confused and unprepared during the global coronavirus pandemic. There are numerous reports of shortages of antibacterial hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, and even toilet paper. While we can’t predict when something like COVID-19 might strike, we can take steps to prepare for an unexpected crisis to help reduce the stress on […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
What is a Statutory Gifts Rider & Why is it Needed?
The Statutory Gifts Rider or SGR, is a modification to a power of attorney that allows the agent to give gifts. Without the Statutory Gifts Rider the agent under a power of attorney is only allowed to give gifts totaling $500 for the year for personal and family maintenance. The Statutory Gifts Rider may be […]