The Plain English Attorney Blog
Far too many attorneys overcomplicate things, making topics convoluted and difficult to understand to the average person. This blog is committed to explaining legal planning topics in an easy to understand format, in plain English. Enjoy the blogs, and please let us know if there is a topic you would like covered.
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You know a plan is broken into a thousand-piece puzzle when the pages of the trust were taken out of the binder, put back out of order, and some pages are missing. But what happens when the “all-important” (sarcasm inserted here) Schedule A is one of those missing pages? It turns out...
“Well, if you have a Revocable Living Trust, don’t you also need a Will?” the other attorney asked.
“Yeah, you need a Will,” I responded.
“Ah ha!” the other attorney exclaimed, as if he has just made some profound and overriding point to justify his...
One of the most important decisions you can make in estate planning is choosing the right trustees. A frequent question that comes up when speaking with my clients who have younger children is whether or not to name their own parents as trustees. They often believe that naming someone older than...
One of the most expensive estate assets for many families is their home, usually coming in second only to retirement accounts in terms of value. When the house ends up being far and away the most valuable asset in the estate, there are multiple children who are to be treated equally… BUT...
When it comes to estate planning, it comes down to what assets you want to pass along and how it happens. However, the legacies we leave behind are often far more than money. In this broadcast originally to The Plain English Attorney Community, attorney and author Jeffrey G. Marsocci provides a...
When approaching something new and unfamiliar, people tend to think of things like estate planning in the simplest terms possible. However, it’s not like going to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk where there may be some small differences, but by and large there is not much of a...
The Estate Planning Source, an organization I have been affiliated with for many years, has undergone some challenges lately in addition to the COVID issues facing every other business. With the purchase of the business finalized in May by long-time employee Bobbie Setser, the...
“But this doesn’t apply to us!” It’s common enough to see lots of language in trusts and other legal documents that are ‘boilerplate’ that should stay in anyway. In this video, I review some of the most commonly questioned provisions and why they should be kept...
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with good intentions who mistakenly provide incomplete, or even inaccurate, information with unforeseen potential results. In this post that is making it’s way around Facebook, a local American Legion Post is trying to provide estate planning nuggets...
The keystone to our law office's estate planning process is my book Estate Planning Basics, provided as required reading for every Estate Strategy Session with clients wishing to discuss their estate planning goals. That in combination with filling out a basic questionnaire means our...
You can hear that hydrating is important, it actually helped me lose a lot of weight in a relatively short period of time. In this installment of My Fitness Journey, I cover how I adopted a specific plan to drink enough water every day and make it a habit I intend to keep for life as well as some...
I get this question all the time when clients move to my state, or when my clients are moving to other states. “Is my trust still good?” The question really is “Do I need to update my estate plan?” In this video, I cover the checklist process in reviewing whether or not a...
