INTRODUCTION Each year the Financial Awareness Foundation promotes National Estate Planning Awareness Week.  The Financial Awareness Foundation is currently under organization to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. From their website, “it was established to significantly improve financial awareness and financial literacy. The Foundation’s vision as an educational public benefit corporation is to teach, promote, motivate, and […]

Approval, confirmation and affirmation!  We all like these things, right?  For years I have encouraged clients to get “bank” or “special” powers of attorney for assets that are not a part of their trust. This includes Calpers which has benefits not a part of the living trust. I recently received notice from a large law […]

How would you feel if your evil ex-husband or witch of an ex-wife received your life insurance after you die?  Talk about rolling over in your grave!? Upon filing for divorce, in California, there are automatic restraining orders. Among them, you are not allowed to make changes to non-probate transfers without the consent of your […]

Estate planning and, in particular, estate taxes remain a moving target. Here’s a recent article from the New York Times highlighting this problem.  I encourage you to check it out here. – John Palley

I have had a couple of instances in the last few days where we have a new client where a house call will be in order.  The client, or their spouse or child, ask “why.”  They don’t want to spend the extra money for an attorney to go to their house. Let me explain the […]

If President Obama’s 2014 budget is any prediction of the future the 2013 “permanent” estate tax law changes are not very permanent. Or, put another way, only politicians would call them permanent!  I have read, in recent days, that President Obama is proposing going back to 2013 estate tax levels. That would mean a $3.5m […]

It’s been said many times that an estate plan is just that… a PLAN. Yes, it’s a group of form derived documents but, as I always say, it’s knowing WHICH FORMS to use. However, it’s more than that.  One of the fundamental keys to an estate plan is for the client to understand how the […]

I have been on vacation for the last two weeks. I thought about blogging almost every day but I never did it. However, I feel re-charged, re-energized and ready to WORK! I am ready to blog and ready to roll! I read an interesting article last week. It suggested that the average person spends more […]

The 2013 report on America’s most advisor friendly trust companies was released last week.  Here is a link to the full article.  The article has a lot of informative information about working with a trust company and some of the differences of using trust companies in different states. Also, in that article is a list of […]

“We aren’t quite ready to finish our estate plan yet….” “We are waiting to finish one other thing first….” “As soon as we finish our taxes we will get it done….” “We want to see how our son behaves the next few months and then we’ll finish….” Clearly no time is “perfect” for finishing an […]