Estate planning is the overall process by which a person decides who will inherit his or her property upon death and who will manage his or her affairs in case of incapacitation. Although estate planning is not the same thing as a will or trust, these documents are typically part of the...
5 Reasons to Consider Updating Your Estate Plan
If you already have an estate plan in place, you are well ahead of the game. However, estate planning isn’t something you just do once and forget about. Rather, you must periodically review and update your estate plan—especially following certain major life events. In this article, we discuss five reasons you should...
Advantages of Avoiding Probate in Florida
Probate is a court-supervised process by which the court, through a personal representative, identifies and gathers the assets of a deceased person (also called a decedent), pays his or her debts, and distributes his or her assets to the appropriate beneficiaries. Although probate is useful and sometimes necessary, it has several disadvantages....
Estate Planning with Time Shares
Most people are not aware that having a time share can create some estate planning issues. The main problem occurs with ones which are located out of the state where you reside, which is the norm. You may have a time share in Florida, Aruba,...
How to Determine if You are an Estate’s Personal Representative
A personal representative is the person or entity appointed by a probate judge to oversee the administration of a deceased person’s probate estate. Unfortunately, disputes sometimes arise regarding this role. For example, prior to death, a person may ask more than one person to act as the personal representative of his or...
How Estate Planning Can Prevent Elder Exploitation
Most people are familiar with elder abuse, which involves physically or emotionally harming a senior citizen. Less commonly understood, however, is the illicit practice of elder exploitation. As opposed to mental and physical types of abuse, elder exploitation is of a financial nature. Specifically, elder exploitation is the fraudulent or otherwise illegal,...
The Benefits of Revocable Trusts
Advertisements, seminars and books which promote revocable living trusts foster the misconception that probate is an evil to be avoided. Living trusts are also touted as devices which avoid estate taxes and protect assets from long-term health care costs.
The reality is that probate is usually not a difficult...
5 Key Estate Planning Steps
Over half of all adults in the U.S. do not have an estate plan in place. One explanation for this phenomenon is that many people simply don’t know how to get started with estate planning. This is understandable: estate planning can seem like a daunting task. The reality, though, is that creating...
7 Tips for Avoiding Probate in Florida
Probate can often be avoided in Florida when assets are set up with clear transfer instructions ahead of time. This court-supervised process is used to transfer assets when someone dies without those instructions in place. Tools like beneficiary designations, trusts, and proper titling allow many assets to pass directly to loved ones...
What Happens When You Die Without a Will
When one dies without a will, commonly referred to dying intestate, the laws of the state where the decedent resided at the time of his or her death determines what happens to that person's assets. In many states, where one dies leaving a spouse and no children, all assets go to the...