Don’t Send Your Kids Back to School Without These Documents

As summer comes to a close, and back-to-school excitement fills the air, there is one crucial task that is often overlooked: designating legal guardians for your minor children. Legal guardians are the individuals you entrust with the care of your children if, for any reason, you are unable to do so yourself.  In the hustle…
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3 Reasons Why Transferring Ownership Of Your Home To Your Child Is A Bad Idea

Whether it’s to qualify for Medicaid, avoid probate, or reduce your tax burden, transferring ownership of your home to your adult child during your lifetime may seem like a smart move. But in nearly all cases, it’s actually a huge mistake, which can lead to dire consequences for everyone involved. With this in mind, before…
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How Naming Guardians For Your Kids In Your Will Can Leave Them At Risk

If you are a mom or dad with children under the age of 18 at home, your number-one estate planning priority should be selecting and legally documenting both long and short-term guardians for your kids. Guardians are the people legally named to care for your children in the event something happens to you. And if…
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Protect Your Children’s Inheritance With A Lifetime Asset Protection Trust

As a parent, you’re likely hoping to leave your children an inheritance. In fact, doing so may be one of the primary factors motivating your life’s work. But without taking the proper precautions, the wealth you pass on is at serious risk of being accidentally lost or squandered due to common life events, such as…
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What To Expect From Your Initial Meeting With A Personal Family Lawyer®

Whether you’ve met with an estate planning lawyer before or it’s your first time, it’s important to understand how working with a Personal Family Lawyer® is different from meeting with a traditional lawyer.  Here we will explain what’s involved with our process, in hopes that it will inspire you to meet with a Personal Family…
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Don’t Leave Your Children With The Babysitter Until You Read This

As we head into the third year of the pandemic, we are coming to terms with just how fragile our lives and health really are. If you haven’t gotten sick yourself, it’s almost certain you know someone who has, and many of us even know of one or more individuals who have died in the…
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How to Pass Down Your Family Wealth Legacy During The Holidays

As you likely already know, but may not have given much thought about, the most important inheritance you provide is so much more than the money you’ll leave behind, but also includes your values, insights, stories, and experience. And, while those things are being passed on happenstance on the daily, we know that intentionally creating…
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Think You Are Too Young to Need An Estate Plan? Think Again.

The pandemic has caused Americans to change their behavior in a number of different ways, and one of the most positive of these changes is related to estate planning. For the first time since the study’s inception, Caring.com’s 2021 Wills and Estate Planning Study found that young adults are now more likely to have an…
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2021 Estate Planning Checkup: Is Your Estate Plan Up to Date?

Even if you put a totally solid estate plan in place, it can turn out to be worthless for the people you love if it’s not regularly updated. Estate planning is not a one-and-done type of deal—your plan should continuously evolve along with your life circumstances and other changing conditions, such as your assets and…
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Estate Planning Must-Haves For Single Parents

If you are a single parent, life for you right now probably couldn’t get any busier. You are likely being pulled between work, school activities, and home – and the inevitable emergencies that fill the lives of single parents everywhere. Being a single parent is a huge responsibility, even if you do share time with…
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Kids Protection Planning

Family Wealth Planning: The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do Now to Feel Better About Yourself As a Parent – and Leave the World a Better Place – No Matter How Much Money You Have in the Bank

If you are like most of the parents I know, you feel guilty. It’s what parents do. Whether your guilt is about not enough time with the kids, too much time with the kids, hovering incessantly, or being too laid…

Taking the Complexity Out of Estate Planning

Remember that old joke: How do you eat an elephant?  Answer: One bite at a time.  At the heart of that gag is the truth about how you tackle any seemingly complex task, taking it one step at a time…

7 Good Reasons You Need An Estate Plan — Even If You Only Have $500 in the Bank

Contrary to popular belief, estate planning is not just about money or taxes.  Far from it. Today, it’s more about protecting your assets for yourself and your loved ones, achieving your financial goals and safeguarding your health care.  Money and…

Why You Should Get Your Kids an Estate Plan

We are fairly certain the last thing your 18-year-old kid is thinking about is an estate plan.  And you are probably not thinking about one for them either, but you should be.  Here’s why:  once your child turns 18, you…

Learn From the Expensive Mistakes & Smart Decisions Made By Actor James Gandolfini In Planning for His Estate

James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his portrayal of Tony Soprano on HBO’s The Sopranos, died suddenly last month while on vacation in Italy.  His will is already on the Internet, available for everyone to read – which is…

Best Mother’s Day Gift Ever? The Kids Protection Planning Kit®

By now, the flood of floral commercials has already reminded us that Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 12.  But before you plunk down a good chunk of change on something that will wilt and die in a week or so,…

Congratulations! It’s an Estate Plan! Protecting Your Newborn From Birth

In the process of becoming new parents, many couples become experts at planning – scheduling the birthing classes, planning the new nursery, even picking out a preschool. There is so much to think about before you welcome your new child.…

What We Can Learn From Downton Abbey About Estate Planning

Downton Abbey – the PBS drama about the fortunes and misfortunes of an aristocratic British family in the early 20th century that has taken American audiences by storm – gets most of its gripping plot twists as the result of…

When It Comes to Inheritance, Treating Children Equally Not Always the Best Plan

While most parents have the inclination to treat all their children equally when it comes to an inheritance, Personal Family Lawyers® know that this is not always the wise choice.  Here are some scenarios when an unequal distribution may be…

Avoid these 10 Common Estate Planning Mistakes

As a Personal Family Lawyer®, I see many of the same estate planning mistakes made time and again by people who either fail to plan properly or who use “do-it-yourself” estate planning websites or forms in an effort to save…

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