Estate Planning

If your spouse passes away, you know you may have some big financial decisions to make. This could include doing substantial estate planning to alter the plan in light of your new situation.For instance, perhaps your estate plan included setting assets aside to make...

You have probably heard people talk about how it's never too early to do your estate planning. You don't have to put it off until you retire. Even if you're in your early 20s, it wouldn't hurt to get an estate plan in place. After all, accidents take lives every day....

Do you know people who have not written a will or made an estate plan? Even if you never talk about it with them, you probably do. A shocking amount of people have never drafted a will. They just keep procrastinating and putting it off.Have you ever wondered why they...

There are dozens and potentially hundreds of individual goals for an estate plan, which differ from person to person. What your goals are depend on what assets you have, what you want to accomplish and what your family needs.However, the basic goals that you have can...

When you draft a health care proxy, the goal is to pick an agent who will then act on your behalf. If you cannot make medical decisions, they make them for you.For instance, if you have a stroke and you cannot speak to the doctors, they can decide what type of...

The general assumption in the modern world is that life expectancy should keep going up. As medicine advances, people live longer. We haven't had a war on the scale of the World Wars in generations, diseases are more contained than they have been in the past and...

In some cases, parents do not want to leave their homes to their children. They feel like it would just be a burden for the kids to have to decide if they want to keep it or sell it -- not to mention going through with the sale and splitting up the money. It can even...

If you decide to use a trust for your assets, it can prevent the children from using those assets in the way that they want. For instance, a trust could stipulate that the child does not get any money until age 30 or that the money has to be used to pay for college...

Funeral planning is a simple necessity, but it can be hard to bring up. It feels a bit awkward to talk about something that many of us spend so much time trying not to think about.However, this is a very critical part of the estate planning process. It's important for...

If you think that your estate plan just needs to address your assets, it's time to dig a bit deeper. To create an effective plan, you not only need to pass your assets on to your heirs, but you need to do it in a way that minimizes conflict. You want them to have...