Estate Planning Awareness

When creating an estate plan, the main decision is how your assets will be distributed after you pass away. Understanding “per stirpes” and “per capita” distribution is [...]

Making sure you have the right estate planning documents is one of the simplest ways to have a positive impact on your family’s future. Proper planning ensures that your wishes will be [...]

Home for the Holidays, An Unexpected Surprise: Part II In Part I of this series, we discussed what happens when you come home for the holidays and find an elderly loved one who has obviously not [...]

Home for the Holiday, An Unexpected Surprise: Part I   It’s not what you expected to find when you traveled home to visit your elderly parents or grandparents for the holidays: the pawpaw [...]

After small or no increases the past couple of years, Medicare’s Part B premium will rise sharply in 2020. The basic monthly premium will increase $9.10, from $135.50 a month to $144.60.  The [...]

There are lots of misconceptions about estate planning, and any one of them can result in costly mistakes. Understanding who needs an estate plan and what it should cover is key to creating a [...]

You have planned your life carefully. With your spouse you have drawn up a will and established trusts to organize your estate after your deaths. You have made decisions about the guardianship of [...]

Many people like the idea of leaving bequests to favorite charities in their wills. But instead of leaving money to a charity in your will, you can put that money into a charitable remainder [...]

Many people, especially seniors, see joint ownership as an easy way to avoid probate and plan for incapacity, but there are major drawbacks to joint accounts. When people own property as joint [...]

Married couples have a special way to jointly own property in some states that has advantages over regular joint ownership. If you are married and own property jointly, you should make sure you [...]