Estate blog
Everything you need to know about Estate Planning, including how to get letters, if you need Estate Planning, and more.
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Estate Planning and Owning Real Estate with Non-Spouses
This is an estate planning attorney question I get quite often, so I thought I'd answer it here. The question centers around one thing generally - "how can I make sure my property goes to the right person when I die when I own it with someone who is not a relative?"...
Revocable Living Trusts Explained
Since I did the Estate Planning 101 post yesterday, I thought today would be a good day to tackle the next most used estate planning vehicle for most people - revocable living trusts. To begin with, there are certain people that will want to consider a revocable...
Estate Planning 101
It's been a while since I just dove into the basics of estate planning, so let's do it real quick. To begin, estate planning covers you in two scenarios: Scenario #1 - you are alive but incapacitated (think you are in a car accident or you have dementia). Scenario #2...
Easy Revocable Trust Banking Solution
When my estate planning clients are done creating their revocable living trust I usually do two things: 1. I move all of their real estate into the trust; and 2. I counsel them to update all of their beneficiary and transfer on death designees to be the trust. This...
Estate Planning and Real Estate with Multiple Heirs
Looks like we've got a little bit of a real estate theme going on here the last couple of posts. That's what people are asking us about, so that's what we're talking about. This time, we're talking about real estate and estate planning where a house is set to go to...
Do You Have to Pay Excise Tax to Transfer Real Estate into a Trust?
I had a conversation with a potential client today that asked me about whether or not excise taxes had to be paid on a real estate transfer into a revocable living trust. So I thought I'd answer that question right here. First, let's define excise tax. At it's most...
Divorce and Estate Planning
Unfortunately not all marriages work out. When that happens all sorts of stuff needs to get updated, including your estate plan. Here's the quick and dirty of what you need to think about updating, and why. FIRST, it's important to know that if you die before your...
Three Ways to Challenge a Will or a Trust
A common estate planning attorney question I get is "how can I make sure no one challenges my will?" I always tell everyone the same thing: "There is no way to prevent someone from challenging your will if they want to. If they have money and motivation, they can file...
Revocable Living Trusts Do Not Provide Asset Protection
When people think about protecting their assets they often think of trusts. We always see in the movies how super rich people doing bad things or wanting to avoid taxes create trusts to shield their assets from lawsuits and the government. There are two truths we need...
Don’t Quitclaim Deed Your Kids Your Real Estate
A common idea when people are thinking about estate planning is to quitclaim their home to their kids. The thinking is it will allow one to avoid probate and just make things simple. The problem, however, is that it can create a bunch of unintended problems. Let's...
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