For many people, estate planning may seem like a daunting task, or something that’s reserved for older, more established people. However, everyone could benefit from an estate plan and should have one in place. This is especially true for young adults like college students. Students are just starting out on their adult lives, and usually don’t have a lot of assets, but there is more to life than just assets. It’s Read More
Mental Health and Incapacity
Having mental health issues does not automatically mean the person is disabled. What’s more, there are many types of disability. A common example is when we are asked to do planning (such as updating their Will or Power of Attorney) for a someone who appears to have limitations. We use a set of standard questions and observations to determine capacity, and of course a letter from their doctor carries a great deal of Read More
Estate Planning Tools For Your Special-Needs Family Members
April is World Autism Acceptance Month, and also happens to be tax month. There is no better time to take a look at how you can utilize estate planning to maximize the inheritance for your beneficiaries while minimizing tax liability. There are many estate planning tools available to provide necessary assistance for special-needs family members, who may or may not be able to work or live alone. This article will Read More
The “Nest Egg” Trust: Is It Right For You?
As a firm that works diligently to provide the best possible options for estate and elder-care planning, we often get a lot of familiar questions. Although each individual and family has a unique way to get there, each family desires the same thing: financial security and an estate plan that benefits and protects the people who matter most. Our firm has developed some amazing proprietary methods to make sure that you Read More
Get “The Best Of Both Worlds” for Blended Families
One of the most loving things you can do for your family this Valentine's season is to make an estate plan that will show them just how much you’re thinking of them. For blended families, it’s especially important that your plan be very clear. Simply relying on your people to “do the right thing” isn’t enough because people have different interpretations of what the “right thing” is. For example, what if my husband Read More
Why ACE Client Care™ Makes Your Estate Plan More Valuable
A Very Happy New Year to our blog readers! Everything in our lives needs maintenance. For your car, you wouldn’t skip an oil change or a tire rotation, and your estate plan isn’t any different. Our ACE Client Care™ program, a unique benefit not available in most estate planning firms, makes it easy to keep your estate plan up to date, ensuring it stays relevant as circumstances change. Whether it’s being informed Read More
How to Protect Your Estate Plan from Challenges
One of the main reasons that you want to have an estate plan in place is to ensure that your final wishes are carried out properly when the time comes. While in most cases, your friends and family members will want to make sure that they do what you desired with your estate, that is not always the case. If someone feels that your estate plan was unfair or unjust for some reason, they can challenge it in Read More
Tips to Deal With Inflation
As of the writing of this blog post, inflation rates are over 8% per year, on average. The following tips will help you to effectively protect your estate from inflation so it will be there for you when you need it, and for your loved ones when you are gone. Consider a “Self-Directed” IRA Your retirement plan is not limited to investments in mutual funds or the stock market. We’ve helped many clients use their IRA Read More
Providing for Your Pet With a Trust
We all want the best for our furry friends, and the best way to ensure that they’ll be well taken care of is with a pet trust. Believe it or not, you can set up a trust specifically to provide for your pets - and you’ll likely be surprised how much you’re able to specify for the care of your favorite animals. And “pets” includes more than dogs or cats: they can be birds fish, horses, almost anything else. How Does a Read More
ACE Client Care™ Is Here to Keep Your Estate Planning On Track and Relevant!
ACE Client Care is a unique benefit for our clients - and to the best of our knowledge, no other estate firm in the area has anything like it. Just as your financial plan needs to be adjusted from time to time, your estate plan will needs to stay on course as well. When your airline flies you somewhere, your pilots, every so often, reach a certain spot on the map called a “waypoint.” Their flight plan indicates the Read More