When you pass away, you know that your adult children may need to have access to financial accounts fairly quickly. They may need to pay for emergency medical care, for instance, depending on the nature of your passing. They may also have to cover funeral costs and...
Year: 2024
Issues to address with your medical POA
Establishing a medical power of attorney (POA) is one of the most important steps you can take when you’re putting together an estate plan. However, you need to have a heart-to-heart conversation (or several) with your chosen POA, just to make sure that you are both...
Don’t let your estate plan become outdated
Writing an estate plan is important for your future and for your family. Far too many people haven’t written a plan at all. They’ve left no instructions for the distribution of their assets or what end-of-life care they would like to receive. However, even among those...
Can you divide life insurance with your will?
Your life insurance policy is set to make a substantial payment to your adult children when you pass away. You purchased the policy when your first child was born, knowing it was an easy way to provide for them in the future. This may be the most valuable asset that...
3 reasons why people don’t make estate plans
Most people understand that they will need an estate plan at some point in their lives. They’re going to pass away and they need to – at the very least – leave behind a will to tell their descendants what to do with their financial assets. Many are also aware that...
An advance directive can help you plan for end-of-life care
You can make your medical preferences known for a time when you cannot express them yourself and possibly at the end of your life in an advance health care directive. Sometimes, these are referred to as living wills. In your advance directive, you can address various...
What’s ancillary probate (and can you avoid it)?
People in the United States are very mobile, and it isn’t uncommon for a lot of people to maintain homes in more than one state – whether they’re seasonal residences, vacation spots or rental properties. When you die, however, those out-of-state properties can be a...
Do you need to leave $1 to disinherit someone?
You would like to disinherit someone from your will. Perhaps you are unhappy with the choices one of your adult children has made, or maybe you simply know that they don’t need the financial support and that the money would be better used elsewhere. You want to take...
What’s a pretermitted heir?
Sometimes, a testator will purposefully exclude one or more of their heirs from their estate – but what happens if they do so accidentally? Errors of omission in wills may be more common than most people realize, but the law doesn’t want to see anybody disinherited...
What does a medical Power of Attorney do?
The estate planning process largely revolves around who your assets will go to upon your death. Nonetheless, there is so much more to estate planning. You can utilize estate planning documents, such as a medical Power of Attorney, to ensure that appropriate decisions...

