Working with Co-trustees: How You Can Help

When clients select a successor trustee for their trust, they frequently choose one person to serve as a successor trustee at a time. Many attorneys continue to recommend that only a single trustee be appointed to avoid the potential for disagreements or conflicts between co-trustees during the trust administration after the trustmaker’s death or disability. […]

Helping Clients with Anticipated Inheritances

When we think of estate planning, we often think about preparing our clients’ accounts and property to go to their loved ones in a tax-efficient way, protected from probate, disgruntled heirs, beneficiaries’ creditors, divorcing spouses, bankruptcy, and the poor spending habits of beneficiaries. We rarely consider helping our clients prepare for receiving an inheritance. Believe it […]

Helping Clients Responsibly Leave Wealth to Grandchildren

Estate planning attorneys frequently hear from their clients, “I’d like to leave something to my grandchildren. What’s the best way to do that?”  Naturally, grandparents love their grandchildren and want them to succeed in life. And when grandparents are in the twilight of their lives, their hearts often turn to the younger generation with a […]

President Biden’s First One Hundred Days for Advisors: Looking Back and Planning Ahead

This year has been unprecedented from a political perspective in many ways. President Joe Biden stepped into office facing huge obstacles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, an economy battered by the pandemic, a crumbling national infrastructure in dire need of repair, an ongoing immigration crisis at our southern border, and deep political and social divisions […]

Powers of Appointment: A Handy Tool in Your Client’s Toolbox

An often misunderstood but prevalent estate planning tool that often appears in estate planning documents is the power of appointment. Not to be confused with a power of attorney (the document that allows a living person to delegate certain powers to an agent to act on their behalf), a power of appointment can be an […]

Trust Protectors: Are They a Good Fit for Your Client?

What Is a Trust Protector?Traditionally, the three roles that must be filled when setting up a trust are the settlor (also called a grantor, trustor, or trustmaker), the trustee, and the beneficiary. All three roles are necessary to create a trust that functions properly. Although it is relatively common to use trust protectors in foreign […]

Helping Clients Create an Up-to-Date Inventory

If your client has already done estate planning by creating a will or trust, then the client has taken a very important step toward ensuring that if the client becomes incapacitated or dies, the client’s loved ones will know how to help manage the client’s financial and legal affairs. However, simply having a will or […]

Is Your Client’s Estate Plan Incapacity Proof?

For most people, it is perfectly natural to think about estate planning only in terms of planning for death. While it is certainly important for clients to make a plan for their eventual death, if that is all they plan for, their planning will be woefully inadequate. As medical knowledge and technology have improved over […]

Getting Your Clients Ready for 2021

This year is quickly coming to a close. For many of us, December 31 cannot come soon enough, as 2020 has been anything but a walk in the park. The first quarter of 2020 brought a worldwide pandemic. Not only did this raise concerns about everyone’s health and safety, but it also fundamentally changed the […]

Clarification to November 2020 Advisor Newsletter

In our efforts to quickly provide you with the most up to date information on the potential tax ramifications stemming from these unique election events, we did not include the 2018 update of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) limiting Section 1031 like-kind exchanges to real property.  Under current law, exchanges of real property […]