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 [...]
I’ve been a practicing lawyer in Scottsdale for over 30 years and I have never witnessed a fire-storm like the rage that has engulfed the probate system in the past two years. I’d like to bring some sanity to the story and suggest a sensible solution. If you haven’t read the horrible stories or [...]
I recently came across a New York Times article that reminded me of an all too common experience I encounter in my estate planning practice. In the article author Ron Lieber recounts his experiment with 4 different Do-It-Yourself will drafting software programs and the outcome. Although Lieber goes through the pros and cons of [...]
If you’re looking for a way to protect your assets from creditors and lawsuits you should consider creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC). An LLC is a business entity that combines the benefits of a business partnership and a corporation and protects your assets while still allowing you to retain control over them. Desirable characteristics [...]
A typical Thursday night finds me meeting with other lawyers and discussing ideas useful in our respective practices. Although always trying to find new ideas to help clients, these meetings, reminiscent of old style writer’s salons, are particularly useful because of the opportunity to exchange views in an open setting. No idea is too simple [...]
Do you think you can create your own estate plan? In the right circumstances, the answer may be yes… But how do you determine what are the right circumstances? A recent US News and World Report article on do-it-yourself planning gives both sides of the argument. There is a growing recognition that not enough people [...]
In my last blog post I promised to give some concrete examples of why an updated trust is better than one that simply keeps the “status quo”. I will forgo the obvious examples such as inheriting money or growing your assets so that your original plan will no longer work. I’ll also skip over the [...]
It happened again. After telling the audience at a recent seminar that trusts really are living documents that need to be updated periodically, I was approached by several attendees afterward asking if I really meant their trust needed to be updated. After all, they only want to make minor changes; they don’t need anything [...]
Does your estate plan include a digital Will? Last night while I was having dinner with a friend who also works in the legal world, talk turned to the digital age, and one of our dinner partners remarked about how interesting it was that our friend had recently moved and had acquired modern technology like [...]
Social capital is the money or time you contribute to worthy causes that improve society. A favorite saying around charitable causes is the phrase “give or get” which means members can either contribute an amount of money toward the goal or they can go out and raise that sum of money from people they know. [...]