In Wisconsin, a successor trustee is the person or institution you name in a trust to take over management of your trust assets when you can no longer manage them yourself—either due to incapacity or death. Their role is central to how a revocable living trust actually functions.
If...
Losing a loved one is challenging enough without added complications. One way you can take some of the pain out of administering your estate is by preparing a death box, also called a death binder, next-of-kin box, or legacy folder. It serves as a centralized place to organize important information and documents...
Many people have a childhood memory of somebody close to them passing away. Whether the deceased was a parent or grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or a family friend, it may have been their first real encounter facing grief or attending a funeral.
That experience may have left a...
Personal items accumulated over our lifetimes may be left in estate planning limbo when we pass away. You may have kept many personal effects and everyday items more for sentimental reasons than for financial value, such as your clothing, jewelry, books, quilts, collectibles, and religious items.
Each item we...
The United States imposes a federal estate tax at death, which is based on the total value of the deceased person’s estate (everything a person owns at the time of their death) and is paid from the estate itself.
In addition to the federal estate tax, some states assess...
When somebody close to us passes away, we are left with constant reminders of them. Maybe it is a jacket hanging in the closet that still bears the scent of their cologne, a dog-eared book on their nightstand, their handwriting on a scrap of paper, a bench where they sat and fed...
If you are reading this, you need an estate plan. Why? The short answer is that everyone age 18 and older needs an estate plan. It does not matter whether you are old or young, have built up considerable wealth or are just entering adulthood—you need a written plan to control what...
Americans are, quite literally, getting buried in debt, with nearly half expecting to pass away with outstanding debts.[1]
As a general rule, a person’s debts do not go away when they die. Some types of debt, such as federal student loans, are typically forgiven upon the debtor’s...
Why You Need to Worry About Incapacity Planning
Death is the elephant in the room when we talk about estate planning. We often use phrases like pass away and pass on to make our meetings feel more comfortable and avoid being overly macabre, but the not-so-subtle subtext of an...
Michael Jackson passed away in 2009, but the settling of his estate continues more than 15 years after his death due to a lingering tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other legal challenges, including a lawsuit brought by his mother over a deal to sell part of his music...
