Planning for the future of your home can be complicated, especially when you want to ensure that a loved one can continue living there after you are gone. Two common tools for accomplishing this are life estates and right of occupancy trusts. A life estate grants someone the legal right to live...
Category: Trusts
Money Isn’t Everything in Estate Planning: How to Pass Your Stories and Values to Future Generations
Money and property may be the most discussed types of wealth that a person owns, but the riches of their experience and wisdom can mean even more to loved ones down the line. Reinforcement of family traditions can be built into your estate plan alongside your wishes regarding the distribution of your...
3 More Famous Pet Trust Cases and the Lessons We Can Learn from Them
Sometimes, pet owners can get a bit creative when providing for their pets’ future care. The following three famous cases involving pet trusts offer some important lessons.
David Harper and Red
David Harper, a wealthy, reclusive bachelor in Ottawa, Canada, was not exactly famous during his...
How to Give Real Property to a Loved One at Your Death Without Probate Court Involvement
A home is often one of the most important assets that people own. Therefore, most people want to stay in their home until they die and then have a loved one receive it. One common way to pass a home to loved ones is through a will. However, transferring property with a...
Wills, Trusts, and Dying Intestate: How They Differ
Most people understand that having an estate plan benefits them and their loved ones. However, many individuals do not initiate the estate planning process because they do not fully understand the nuances of foundational estate planning tools such as a will and a trust and the full implications of dying without either...
Michael Jackson’s Estate Sells Music to Sony for $600M
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...
Enriching Life with a Third-Party Special Needs Trust
A special needs trust (SNT) allows an individual to provide for a disabled beneficiary without jeopardizing the beneficiary’s eligibility for needs-based government benefits.
SNT funds can generally be used to pay for almost anything that falls outside the basic support that programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and...
How to Choose the Initial Trustee of Your Trust
When you establish a trust, you nominate someone to be the trustee. If you are creating a revocable living trust, you will likely be the initial trustee. You will also want to name successors or backup trustees to step in and manage the trust’s affairs if you can no longer manage the...
Who Should Be Your Successor Trustee?
If you have a revocable living trust, you probably named yourself as the initial trustee so that you can continue to manage your financial affairs. However, someone else will eventually need to step in to administer your trust when you are no longer able to act due to incapacity (the inability to...
Incapacity Planning and Pets
Few US adults have an estate plan. Even fewer have included a pet in their plan. Perhaps you have an estate plan that addresses who will take your pet when you die. But does it address the possibility of your incapacity and the need for a temporary pet caretaker?