Warning – The following are general comments for educational purposes and not intended as legal advice. No client attorney relationship is intended and you should consult an attorney about your specific circumstances before taking any action in reliance on the general information presented in this posting. This is the third part of the life time [...]
Warning – The following are general comments for educational purposes and not intended as legal advice. No client attorney relationship is intended and you should consult an attorney about your specific circumstances before taking any action in reliance on the general information presented in this posting. This is the third part of the life [...]
Welcome to a new multi-part serial presentation of what effective estate planning looks like. Because many common estate planning issues are best handled using a trust based estate plan whose centerpiece is a revocable living trust, trust planning has become common place. Nevertheless, many people new to estate planning begin with commonly held misconceptions. [...]
This is part 2 of a continuing series that began last week with an introductory syllabus. Today’s post about the importance of planning while you are alive and well is the first of a 3 part explanation of lifetime planning describing the issues you must consider. Part 2 will focus on emergency documents and the [...]
We don’t know when, but we do know estate and gift tax reform is coming sometimes in the next 13 months. There are almost as many plans as there are Senators, but one of the most comprehensive and regressive is The “Sensible Estate Tax Act of 2011” introduced November 17, 2011 by Congressman Jim [...]
Because emergency documents are prepared and intended to be used prospectively, it is crucial that each document reflect your intention, be properly signed and attested, and written in clear language that will be understood by the third party provider to whom it is presented for the purpose of inducing that third party provider to [...]
Powers of Attorney, the most common of estate planning tools, are parceled out by estate planning attorneys like aspirin, but they seldom work when needed. Here’s why – Generic Powers of Attorney will work very well for a large variety of purposes that are seldom encountered, but they usually won’t work well in the [...]
View The AFL Letter I have recently received an important accolade. I have been selected as one of Arizona Finest Lawyers, a peer reviewed validation that strives to identify the top 10% of Arizona lawyers. This was an unsolicited and no-fee accolade bestowed on me without any action by me. The validating organization is a [...]
By now you have probably heard that on December 17, 2010, Congress increased the estate tax exemption to 5 million dollars. You may also have heard the new term “portability” thrown about; read that the estate, gift, and GST taxes have once again been “reunified” at the 5 million dollar level; and that this is [...]
Over my many years practicing law I have become a niche lawyer concentrating on estate planning. A growing part of my estate planning practice involves administration of trusts and estates. An inevitable part of trust or estate administration is resolving contested matters. Unhappily, a large number of those disputes become litigated matters instead of models [...]