Consumer Reports magazine highlights the top “7 money stumbles to avoid,” and lists “not updating your [estate plan] and beneficiaries” as the number one stumble. The article highlights CR’s finding that 86% of respondents hadn’t updated their estate planning documents or beneficiary designations within the previous five years and then talks about situations in which that might cause problems. Kaiser Law
This New York Times article does a good job of highlighting a bad-case scenario where there wasn’t enough communication about financial affairs between a mother and her daughters. Although it can often be difficult, I almost always encourage my clients to talk with their adult children about their estate plan and their wishes. Often, we will set up a family meeting
A recent Reuters article explored the increasing phenomenon of parents delaying distribution of their loved ones inheritance – even after the parents have passed. I’ve seen this take place in my own practice – most parents are not comfortable with the idea of their children having full access to significant funds until after the age of 30. Even if the parents
For those of you who follow such things, the passing of the 2013 Tax Act – which established a $5.25M per person estate tax exemption (indexed for inflation) was welcome news for higher net worth families. But estate planning and financial professionals warn (as illustrated in this NY Times article titled “Estate Planning Remains a Moving Target Under the New Tax
An article on Wall Street Journal has this advice to give: “With Estate Planning, Don’t Forget Virtual Assets.” Failing to include provisions for virtual assets in a will could lead to real-world losses if the surviving spouse or beneficiaries are unable to access the deceased’s online accounts. Here are just a few samples of the digital assets with obvious financial value:
We do estate planning because we want to make sure that our loved ones are taken care of at the time of our passing. At the very least, we would want our wealth to be preserved and distributed according to our wishes in order to provide the ones we leave behind with financial stability. While the purchase of life insurance and
In a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Clients for Venus”, female financial advisers describe how women tend to take a different approach from men when it comes to financial planning: “Men are extremely competitive about money management. They think, ‘how much money can I make and how much more is it than the benchmark or the guy sitting next to
There’s something about watching celebrities acting like “real people” and making mistakes that seems to appeal to viewers, as proven by the continuing popularity of reality TV shows. A Forbes article on “What We Can Learn From Celebrity Estate Planning Gone Wrong” shows that the estate planning foibles of the rich and famous are no exception – there’s already a show
Thomas Kinkade was a self-named “painter of light”, whose mass-produced works of art are estimated to grace one in every twenty American homes. Following his untimely death on April 6, 2012, however, his most famous pieces are turning out to be a couple of holographic wills he left to his girlfriend of 18 months, Amy Pinto-Walsh. The wills bequeath Pinto-Walsh with
Previous blog posts discussed how the wills left behind by famous figures such as Whitney Houston and Thomas Kinkade will likely go through a lengthy and expensive probate court that could have been avoided if they had updated their estate planning documents after life changing events. A recent Forbes article lists 5 Life Event Changes That Require An Estate Planning Review: