You Need a Buy-Sell Agreement for Your Business

Every business should have a buy-sell agreement to protect the owners, their families, employees and the company. Without a buy-sell agreement or succession plan, any company is at risk, notes a recent article titled “Why does your business need a buy-sell agreement?”...

Can You Make Heirs Behave from the Grave?

Imposing strange or amusing conditions upon heirs may make for good novels. However, in the real world, terms and conditions are limited by the law. A last will or trust contains language specifying how you want assets to be distributed after your death. There are...

How Does a Conservatorship Work?

Kiplinger’s recent article titled “Britney Spears’ Sad Song … Warning: This Could Happen to You” says that conservatorship is a topic that’s been in the news lately with Britney’s recent court battle. In Britney’s case, while there has not been any evidence alleged of...

Powers of Attorney & Health Care Directives

A medical crisis only gets worse when you learn you don’t have legal authority to make medical decisions for a loved one, or find out after a loved one is incapacitated that you can’t gain access to assets in their trust. You need to have certain estate planning legal...

What is Needed to Transfer a Home to Children?

The reason for considering the transfer of a full or partial ownership in your home to children makes a difference in how you should proceed, says nj.com’s recent article entitled “What taxes are owed if I add my children to my deed?” If the objective is to avoid...

What You Need to Know about Probate

We often read about celebrities who die without an estate and how everything they own must go through probate. The article titled “What to know about probate” from wmur.com explains what that means, and what you need to understand about wills, trusts, probate and...

Can I Be Certain My Estate Plan Is Successful?

Forbes’ recent article entitled“7 Steps to Ensure a Successful Estate Plan” listed seven actions to take for a good estate plan: Educate and communicate. A big reason estate plans aren’t successful, is that the next generation isn’t ready and they waste or mismanage...

Does a Bank Account Beneficiary Override a Will?

You’ve named beneficiaries to accounts many times already, when you opened an IRA, bought an insurance annuity, a life insurance policy, started an investment account, signed up for a pension or bought shares in a mutual fund. These are the accounts that come to mind...

Farm Succession and Estate Planning

If you think it’s bad that 60% of farmers don’t have a will, here’s what’s even worse: 89% don’t have a farm transfer / succession plan, as reported in the recent article “10 Farm Transition and Estate Planning Mistakes” from Farm Journal’s Pork Business. Here are the...

Blended Families Create Estate Planning Challenges

Law school teaches about estate planning and inheritance, but experience teaches about family dynamics, especially when it comes to blended families with aging parents and step siblings. Not recognizing the realities of step-sibling relationships can put an estate...