Category Archives: Estate Planning
Deciding Between a Revocable or Irrevocable Trust
In estate planning, a trust is a legal entity that you create to hold assets for and distribute them to designated beneficiaries. One of the chief advantages of a trust is that the assets it controls are exempt from probate, the court process for administering a decedent’s estate. This allows your beneficiaries to gain access […]
Common Estate Planning Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The purpose of estate planning is to make decisions now that will protect your property later in your lifetime and ensure that it will pass to your intended beneficiaries efficiently after you’re gone. It’s an unpleasant task that is too easily put off, and many people don’t give it the attention it deserves. Worse still, […]
New York Small Estate Administration: How it Works
Probate, a court process for settling decedents’ estates, can be expensive and time consuming. If an estate is small, the cost of a traditional probate might consume most of the assets, leaving little for the heirs. That is why New York law permits some smaller estates to go through a faster, less expensive process called […]
Living Wills and Other Advance Directives Help You Plan for Emergencies
Estate planning is not just about how you want your property handled following your death. It can also be a vital part of ensuring your health and economic well-being later in life. This includes planning for emergency situations in which you may be unable to make decisions for managing your healthcare and financial affairs. By […]
What Happens to the Family Home in a Divorce?
One of the most difficult issues that comes up during a divorce is what to do with the family home. More than just another asset to be divvied up, the home is the place where the family gathered for evening meals, where holidays were shared and where children grew up. In addition to holding this […]
Advantages of Putting Assets Into a Living Trust
A living trust is a method of preserving and investing wealth during your lifetime and earmarking the proceeds for designated beneficiaries upon your death. It is also called a revocable trust because it gives you the power to alter or terminate it. Living trusts provide numerous advantages that make them useful tools in estate planning. […]
How a Pour-over Will Helps Achieve Your Trust Objectives
Individuals may choose to create a trust, in addition to a will, when they desire a high degree of control over the distribution of their estate. The most common type of trust is the revocable living trust, which allows individuals to place their assets into a trust but still use them while they are alive. […]
How to Write a Will That Can Survive a Probate Contest
A will is an essential part of estate planning. It contains your core instructions for the management and distribution of your property upon your death. However, even a carefully written will may be subject to challenge by your heirs or other interested parties. With this in mind, you can take certain steps designed to ensure […]
New York’s New Simplified Power of Attorney: How it Can Work for You
A new law taking effect in June 2021 makes it easier for New Yorkers to prepare and execute powers of attorney to delegate the handling of financial and legal matters to an agent. The law will make it easier for people to use POAs for multiple purposes, such as estate planning. Under prior law, the […]
Pros and Cons of Revocable Living Trusts in Estate Planning
A revocable living trust can be an effective method of distributing property to your intended beneficiaries without need of a probate proceeding. A trust is traditionally an agreement between two parties — the grantor and the trustee — directing how property is to managed and for whose benefit. But a living trust allows you be […]
