Estate Planning

Estate planning protects your loved ones should you become incapacitated or die. However, its benefits can be limited if you make mistakes. All documents in your plan, including the will, should be drafted correctly to avoid issues like contests. Here are four...

Appointing an executor for your estate plan is crucial. You need to name a reliable executor - someone you trust, be it a family member or a close friend. It may help to have more than one - a primary and an alternate. The latter will perform the duties of the primary...

Estate plans are “living documents.” This means that they can – and should – be updated as someone’s life situation and/or preferences change. If you already have an estate plan in place, you will have to revisit and update your estate plan as changes to your personal...

Your recently deceased loved one had a detailed estate plan. The problem is that they didn’t do much consultation with family members to see if they really wanted certain assets before they bequeathed them. Unless those assets involve money, stocks, mutual funds or...

There are some cases in which people would like to leave their assets to a specific heir, but they worry that the heir may have habits or behaviors that will be detrimental to their future.  For example, perhaps you have three children, and two of them are financially...

In your estate plan, you may designate heirs to inherit your assets. This may mean giving your spouse the house and savings, your children your car and heirlooms and maybe even a friend or distant relative something special. However, using a will to allocate assets to...

Estate planning can be complicated enough when you’re just dealing with one family. But when you have a blended family, essentially mixing two families together after a second marriage, it gets to be very complex. It also increases the odds that your heirs will...

Passing away without an estate plan means you relinquish quite a bit of control over your assets and affairs. If you become incapacitated before your death without certain documents and plans established, someone else will make all your medical decisions, and it may...

When planning for the future, an estate plan is a key legal instrument to have in place. While the main purpose people have for creating an estate plan is to designate heirs and ease the distribution process of their assets after their death, it can also decide your...

Although it is a decision most Floridians put off, naming a guardian for your minor children while creating your will can help prevent potential problems down the road.  As you can imagine, the choice of a guardian is not something you should take lightly. Remember,...