Executor Rights: How You Are Protected While Administering an Estate
Being named executor of someone’s estate is often viewed as an honor. It means the person who created the will trusted you to handle their affairs and carry out their wishes after death. But once the process begins, many executors discover that the role involves far more than distributing belongings or closing a few bank accounts.
3 Estate Planning Steps Every New Homeowner Should Take
Owning a new home brings new responsibilities and new opportunities to ensure that your estate plan reflects your life today. From reviewing how your home is titled to checking that your plans for loved ones are clear, we can help you take practical steps to protect what matters most.
Raising Stewards, Not Mere Beneficiaries: Preparing the Next Generation for Inheritance
Adopting a stewardship mindset, as in stewarding family wealth, shifts conversations about estate planning and inheritance from consumption to long-term preservation, from entitlement to responsibility, and from instant gratification to legacy. In estate planning, raising stewards rather than mere beneficiaries can reshape how families approach intergenerational wealth.
Saving for School: Planning for Your Family’s Education
If postsecondary education is in your family’s future, the following tools can be excellent additions to your estate plan to help provide for education needs.
What to Do When Your Doctor Tells You to Get Your Affairs in Order
If you are facing a serious medical diagnosis, follow these tips on crucial documents that will enable you to take back control of your future, ensure that your wishes are honored, and prevent difficult decisions about finances, healthcare, and guardianship from falling to your loved ones during a crisis.
Love, Loss, and Legacy: Handling Sentimental Belongings After the Death of a Loved One
While your estate plan may describe in detail who will receive big-ticket items, your loved ones may argue over small nostalgic items that you unintentionally omitted. To prevent family strife and forestall bickering among your loved ones, you also need to think in a big-picture way about the little things in your estate.
What Is an Inheritor’s Trust?
Among the numerous types of trusts aimed at fulfilling different estate planning purposes, an inheritor’s trust is specially designed to help protect an inheritance.
Committed, Protected, Prepared: Estate Planning Tips for Unmarried Partners
If you and your partner choose not to marry, you must have an estate plan tailored to your individual situation. Without an estate plan, your partner generally has no legal authority to make decisions for you if you become injured or incapacitated (unable to manage your own affairs) or to inherit from you when you pass away.
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 […]
Are Pensions Treated the Same in Your Estate Plan as Other Retirement Accounts?
The first private pension plan in the United States was established in the late 1800s. Through 1980, nearly 40 percent of Americans were covered by a traditional employer-funded pension. But […]