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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Sometimes something that is “common knowledge” is just a myth, and myths are prevalent in estate planning for special needs beneficiaries. For example,
* MYTH: You can't leave an inheritance to to a beneficiary with special needs.
* MYTH: You should...
One of the hot new investment trends is NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens. Because it is so new, questions come up about how this investment is funded into a revocable living trust. In this video, I run through the basics of NFTs and how they need to be titled to work with your revocable living trust...
When it comes to special government programs, what on the surface appears to be a good deal may not really be to your advantage or especially to your estate beneficiaries. Unfortunately, chances are that you are already invested in once these “deals” That is, unless you know all of...
It seems that everything these days moves faster, and we just don’t have enough time to look at things as thoroughly as we need to. Even when it comes to topics that can be critical to improving our lives, people don’t have the time to piece together information from multiple sources...
Taking an estate through probate can be one of the most expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating experiences someone can go through. While a large part of my legal practice is focused on estate planning that avoids probate, sometimes there is just no choice. To help answer some questions about...
How do you destroy your own well-crafted, strategically created, solid estate plan in one move? In this podcast, I cover how one of our most airtight estate plans drafted specifically to benefit a grandson with special needs ended up being placed in jeopardy… because the clients decided to...
A basic question I get all the time is "what's the difference between revocable and irrevocable trusts?" What my clients are getting at is wondering whether or not their plan needs to be based in a trust that is completely amendable or one that is set in stone from the start.
Too often,...
There is one, big lie about probate that financial companies tell their clients all of the time. Unfortunately, many of the professionals at these banks and institutions have no idea that they are telling this lie or how disastrous it actually is to their client’s estate and family.
The lie...
Most estate plans are exposed to risks should a child’s marriage fall apart after receiving an inheritance. In this video clip taken from a longer webinar, I review the potential risks of leaving a direct inheritance to adult children.
What’s better in planning for a beneficiary with Special Needs? ABLE Accounts or Special Needs Trusts? Or is a Revocable Living Trust better? In this special presentation made to Raleigh charity Gabi’s Grounds, Jeff reviews different special needs planning tools for different jobs and...
Our office has a new mascot with a very conspicuous place in the conference room. We now have an “800-Pound Gorilla in the Room” sitting at the foot of the conference room table, and it’s there for a particular purpose. It’s actually a merging of two expressions:
- ...
I was recently asked to spell out the basic things that every senior should have in place, and I came up with eight specific items. While there are certainly more, this is a broad list of the most important legal and practical items.
- Have Estate Document In Place: There are actually several...
