Blog Post

Appointing Your Legacy: A Guide to Using a General Power of Appointment Trust to Protect Your Spouse

Through sickness and health, thick and thin, you and your spouse have been there for each other. You may even share almost everything, including your estate plan. That plan expresses the love and trust you have built over the years. It ensures that the other will be financially and legally ...
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Maximize Tax Benefits and Protect Your Spouse with a Qualified Terminable Interest Property Trust

Valentine’s Day spending totaled nearly $26 billion in 2024, including an all-time high of $6.4 billion spent on jewelry.[1] Yet many Americans report feeling disappointed that their partner did not do enough to celebrate Valentine’s Day.[2] More than 40 percent of US adults say they feel stressed about finding the ...
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Protect Your Wealth and Your Spouse with a Spousal Lifetime Access Trust

February, the month of love, is the perfect time to show your loved ones that you care about their financial futures. While chocolates and flowers are nice gestures, a spousal lifetime access trust (SLAT) can make a more lasting gift, especially with the record-high estate tax exemption set to decrease ...
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Why You Need to Worry About Incapacity Planning

Death is the elephant in the room when we talk about estate planning. We often use phrases like pass away and pass on to make our meetings feel more comfortable and avoid being overly macabre, but the not-so-subtle subtext of an estate plan is death’s inevitability. If death is the ...
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Whom Do You Trust to Make Your Financial Decisions?

You wake up and check your investments over a cup of coffee. That tech stock you have been eyeing continues to trend upward, so you log in to your online brokerage account and buy some shares. Later in the day, you get a notice that your mortgage payment has been ...
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Whom Do You Trust to Make Your Medical Decisions?

It might be a stretch to say that if you have your health, you have everything. However, to some people, decisions about their health are arguably more personal in nature and more important to their overall well-being than financial decisions. This leads to the question of who will step in ...
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Wills, Trusts, and Dying Intestate: How They Differ

Most people understand that having an estate plan benefits them and their loved ones. However, many individuals do not initiate the estate planning process because they do not fully understand the nuances of foundational estate planning tools such as a will and a trust and the full implications of dying ...
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Happy New Year

My last blog post of each year always provides updates on any upcoming estate tax law changes for the new year.  Before we get to the facts and figures, I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you a happy new year and to say a sincere ...
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New Year’s Eve Trivia and Fun Facts

Americans are known for their “work hard, play hard” mindset. On average, we work 1,789 hours per year.[1] However, even with our play-hard mentality, many of us do not stay up to see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.[2] Less than one-third of Americans plan to either attend or ...
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It is Okay to Ask for Help

There are times, like the holiday season, that we think about and prepare for, for much of the year. However, when they arrive, we may still feel unprepared. The holidays serve as a reminder of how quickly life happens. It can also feel this way when we get the news ...
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Time to Make Your Estate Planning List and Check it Twice

“He’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s going to find out who’s naughty and nice . . . .”[1] The estate planning process can sometimes be similar to Santa’s process. You decide who should receive your money and property (the nice people on your list) and who should not (the naughty ones). Gathering ...
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Election 2024 – The Results Are In

The results from the 2024 election are in, and although we still have weeks remaining before the 119th Congress takes office and the new president is inaugurated, there is some clarity about an election that has been called the most important in our lifetime and even in US history. Each ...
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Shannen Doherty Understood That With Divorce, Timing is Everything

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, there were more than 670,000 divorces[1] and more than 2 million marriages in 2022. Divorce is a common life event that many Americans face during their lifetime. Some states have laws that automatically end an ex-spouse’s appointment as decision-maker in ...
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Enriching Life With Third-Party Special Needs Trusts

A special needs trust (SNT) allows an individual to provide for a disabled beneficiary without jeopardizing the beneficiary’s eligibility for needs-based government benefits. SNT funds can generally be used to pay for almost anything that falls outside the basic support that programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid ...
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Have You Checked Your Beneficiary Designations Lately?

You regularly check the balances of your retirement, bank, and investment accounts. But when was the last time you checked the beneficiary designations on these accounts (and really, all the other accounts that allow you to name a beneficiary)? It may have been years since you first opened an individual ...
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