It doesn’t matter what the size of your estate is when you leave it behind. Estate planning is a big deal, and everyone should have an estate plan set in place. Things can change in a moment, and unexpected things happen. It is especially important if you have family members who depend on you. Why…
Have you been to the hospital for a basic or even an emergency procedure and been asked to sign a generic health care proxy? When your life could be at risk, the hospital staff is required to ask you to sign one if you do not have one in place, should something happen where you…
We don’t want to think about our loved ones passing away. We also don’t know what laws will be in place when that time comes. This makes it important to protect your estate while you can and mitigate estate tax increases now. There are several ways this can happen. Having a knowledgeable estate planning attorney…
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act raised the federal estate tax exemption considerably. Before the tax reform law, it was $5.49 million per person for 2017. It’s up to $11.7 million for 2021 ($23.4 million for a married couple). So, now, even fewer taxpayers have to worry about federal estate taxes when they die. However,…
There’s a good chance that many adult children will have to get involved with their parents’ financial lives as they age. Yet, an overwhelming majority of adult children – 73% – have not had detailed conversations with their parents about their finances, according to a survey by GOBankingRates. One of the primary reasons why survey…
Not very long ago, owning a personal computer was a novelty. Today we all interact personally and professionally using desktop or laptop computers and access the internet by way of cellphones. The constant presence of digital information in our lives has led to social and economic changes that would have been hard to anticipate only…
As hard as it is to get some people to embrace estate planning, getting them to take seriously the need for a health care decision-making plan is even more difficult. At least, that was the case pre-pandemic. We are no longer in an era of hypotheticals. There is a growing sense that being incapacitated by…