Beneficiary and Transfer-on-Death Designations: Are You Doing It Right?
Do you know which of your accounts have beneficiary designations, sometimes called transfer-on-death (TOD) or payable-on-death (POD) designations? Have you updated them recently? Are you aware of what can go ...
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Do You Know What You Own?
Americans’ median household net worth (meaning half the households have more and half the households have less) is around $193,000, while the average net worth is just over $1 million, ...
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Who is Part of Your Professional Team?
If you are like most Americans, you have at least one to-do list. You might also use lists when you are shopping, brainstorming, setting goals, and planning for events. To-do ...
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Ensure That Your Loved Ones Call the Right Doctor
Now that we are in March, we are well past the point at which most of us have abandoned our New Year’s resolutions. As in previous years, improving physical health ...
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Beware of Trust Scams—and How to Spot Them
Trusts are widely used in estate planning to protect and transfer a person’s assets (money, accounts, property, etc.), sometimes in a tax-advantaged manner. Some trusts are highly complex, with multiple ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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