When a spouse passes away this significantly changes your estate planning future. You need the help of an experienced and knowledgeable estate planning lawyer to review your existing plans and documents and to make recommendations about next steps. It can ...
What About Your Digital Passwords?
Digital assets have increased many people's perception of their estates in recent years. You might not think that your estate is substantial enough to warrant estate planning but this is a mistake that could put your loved ones in the difficult situation ...
How Does My Durable Power of Attorney Agent Know What I Want?
A durable power of attorney for health care involves you assigning a certain person or persons to make health care decisions for you if you are unable to do so on your own. Your agent can make many different kinds of health care decisions including decidi ...
New Study Shows One Third of People Don’t Have What It Takes for Minimal Long Term Care
Who will foot the bill if you need a nursing home? That’s a question popping up for more and more families in America these days. Long term care insurance is extremely expensive and premiums have been on the rise in recent years. This doesn't bode well ...
Study Shows Retirement Targets Have Shifted
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique set of challenges for financial and retirement planning and now investors are looking ahead to the future with different priorities. A recent research study from Northwestern Mutual shows that over one third of Ame ...
What Digital Accounts and Assets Might You Be Forgetting in Your Estate Plan?
A relatively new category of assets that you should include in your estate plan are those that are digital. Due to the digital age, many people don't think about how many accounts they have opened or how difficult it would be for loved ones to access thos ...
What Is a Fiduciary’s Duty of Impartiality?
A fiduciary has several different responsibilities to the beneficiaries of an estate or a trust. Violating these could constitute a breach of fiduciary duty and being removed from this role or even being found personally accountable for financial mistakes ...
Short Term Versus Legacy: Your Financial Plan
It can be difficult to ensure that you have enough funds set aside for retirement and that you've done the appropriate strategies and planning to protect yourself later on. But this also must be balanced with your interest in creating a legacy. How do ...
How Does an Executor Gather Assets?
Before an executor can serve in their future duties as personal representative for a deceased person's estate, they must begin by inventorying all assets. Identifying all assets that belong to the decedents and safekeeping them if necessary are two import ...
What Is Intestate?
Estate planning refers to comprehensive financial planning such as making a will, using trusts or pulling together other strategies that help pass on your assets after you pass away. If you do not have a will as part of your estate planning, however, you ...