Lots of things contribute to would-be estate planners becoming actual doers, of course. Procrastination is often ultimately defeated by a replaced sense of urgency that increases as time goes by. Children grow up, with parents naturally thinking of ways to help them...
One of your biggest concerns, as you do your estate planning, is fighting among your children. You know that sibling disputes over a will and inheritance can drag on for months and get very expensive, and you also know that they often push people apart emotionally. In...
There is likely a debate at the ready in response to an estate planning professional’s recent comment that “a lot of clients want to take advantage of this new law.”The referenced enactment concededly applies only to a notably small demographic,...
If you’re a would-be estate planner who continually procrastinates while knowing that it’s important to put things in place, it might be useful for you to evoke a metaphor or image that can help you get started.Consider painting, for example. It’s a...
In today’s above-cited blog headline, the referenced “you” refers to the individual who establishes a trust. The legal designations for that person are actually several and liberally substituted. Trust creators are sometimes called trustors, grantors...
We commented on a major IRS announcement in a recent blog post, noting in our March 20 entry that the agency’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program launched back in 2009 will officially terminate on September 28 of this year. We stressed that many Americans...
When creating your estate plan, you decide that you do not want to split things into thirds for your three children.After all, your oldest daughter is quite well off. She became a surgeon and then married another surgeon she met at work. Together, they make over...
Cryptocurrency these days is more than the mere concept of a few futurists that it was just a few short years ago. The realm of this alternative-to-cash universe is now solidly entrenched and growing, and at least a bit more understood in the general public than it...
“Who’d want to chance it?”That is the question posed to readers in a recent New York Times article addressing estate planning challenges and opportunities. The Times’ specific focus is on the uncertainty – and, pointedly, acrimony –...
Legions of taxpayers and estate holders in California and across the country have dreaded for years the acronym FATCA and what it stands for. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act enacted as federal law by Congress in 2010 has long been viewed as a near limitless...