Beneficiary

A common misconception people have about life insurance is that they only need to designate their spouse, child, or loved one as the beneficiary of the policy to ensure that the life insurance benefits will be available to the beneficiary when they die. Life insurance is an important financial and estate planning tool, but without certain protections in place, there is no guarantee that your beneficiary will receive, or keep, the benefit from your insurance.

Working with an attorney to draft a trust agreement for estate planning purposes is an important step. But just getting the document drafted and signed is not enough. For any trust to be effective, you must complete the process of funding your trust as soon as you can. But what exactly is funding?

Divorce is more common now than it was in the past, as is remarriage. Depending on how long a prior marriage lasted, the former couple may have engaged in certain levels of estate planning together. When that is the case, it is important to understand how a subsequent marriage can impact the estate planning from a prior marriage. If you or someone named in your estate planning documents has remarried, there are several major issues that you should be aware of as well as steps you should take to ensure your estate planning continues to be appropriate for your current situation.

A loved one’s passing is felt by their entire surviving family. But when it comes to carrying out the decedent’s final wishes, not everyone has an equal say. In fact, in many cases, only one person—the executor, or personal representative, of the estate—plays a role in administering a will. This role includes gathering the deceased’s accounts and property, paying debts, managing the money and property, then distributing the money and property to the chosen individuals or charities named in the will. The same is true of trust administration. The trustee, and typically the trustee alone, is in charge of managing, investing, and distributing the trust’s accounts and property according to the instructions in the trust document. If you are the executor of your loved one’s estate or the trustee of their trust, there are some things you need to know.

According to a study conducted by Caring.com, the percentage of people aged fifty-five and older who have created a will has fallen from 60 percent to 44 percent since 2019.^[1] Although creating or updating your estate planning may seem like a daunting task, a proper estate plan can help address the concerns you may face as a senior citizen. We are here to help you.

When selecting a successor trustee for a trust, it is common for the individual who creates the trust (the trustmaker) to choose one person to serve as a successor trustee at a time. Some attorneys routinely recommend that only a single successor trustee be appointed to avoid the potential for conflicts between co-trustees during trust administration. This can be a prudent approach and works well in many situations. This is particularly true when the appointed trustee diligently keeps the beneficiaries of the trust informed about the trust administration and carefully fulfils the trustee’s responsibilities under both the law and the provisions of the trust document.

Clients often naturally choose their children to be beneficiaries of their revocable living trusts. Many clients also wish to name one or more of their children as the trustee of that trust, but are not sure if that is allowed by the law. The short answer is yes, a beneficiary can also be a trustee of the same trust—but it may not always be wise, and certain guidelines must be followed.

Do you know that, according to the National Association of Home Builders, May is National Home Remodeling Month? Many people associate spring with cleaning out the old, brushing off the dirt accumulated from the long winter, and starting projects around the house that have been neglected for far too long.

Perhaps, however, your home is fine as is and you need a remodeling project for something other than your home. Estate planning is one area that often goes unexamined and neglected. Is it time to remodel your estate plan? If so, is that something that you can (or should) do on your own?