Professional Estate Planning

11/22/2025

06/08/2023

In a second marriage, a spouse may feel torn between the needs of their current spouse and the needs of children from an earlier marriage. You can meet the potentially conflicting needs of your spouse and your children from a prior marriage by creating a certain type of trust.

05/10/2023

Estate planning allows an individual to decide exactly who will benefit from their estate, and to what extent.

05/03/2023

Believe it or not, you have an estate. Your estate consists of everything you own: your car, home, other real estate, checking and savings accounts, investments, life insurance, furniture, other tangible assets. No matter how large or how modest, everyone has an estate and something in common—you cannot take it with you when you die. You want to control how those things are distributed to ensure your wishes are carried out.

04/26/2023

If you have adult children (over age 18) living away at college and they get sick or need medical assistance, a parent is NOT authorized to obtain their medical information. It is recommended the adult child to fill out an Advance Healthcare Directive that includes a HIPAA Waiver granting the parent to be the health care agent.

04/04/2023

AN ESTATE PLAN MAY INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS:
A REVOCABLE TRUST: you can designate portions of your estate to go toward certain things while you're alive. If you become ill or incapacitated, your selected trustee can take over. Upon your death, the trust assets transfer to your designated beneficiaries, bypassing probate, which is the court process that may otherwise distribute your property.
MEDICAL DIRECTIVE: spells out your wishes for medical care if you become unable to make those decisions yourself. You can also give a trusted person medical power of attorney for your health care, giving that person the authority to make decisions if you can't.
DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY: allows someone else to manage your financial affairs if you're medically unable to do so. Your designated agent can act on your behalf in legal and financial situations when you can't. This includes paying your bills and taxes, as well as accessing and managing your assets.

03/15/2023

Another lesson in how NOT to do your Estate Planning. PROBATE of LISA MARIE PRESLEY. Lisa Marie’s mother, Priscilla, is challenging the validity of an amendment to her daughter’s living trust that named Lisa-Marie’s children as executors and trustees. The amended document purportedly removes Priscilla and Lisa Marie’s former business manager as the original trustees and completely cuts Priscilla out.

Per Priscilla’s allegations, Lisa Marie’s signature appears suspicious in the 2016 amendment and the document had no witnesses, misspelled her name and was never given to previous trustees for review as required by agreement. Priscilla and her granddaughter, Riley, reportedly aren’t communicating and are set to battle it out in court.

03/15/2023

6 Estate Planning Mistakes to Avoid:
1) Not planning at all
2) Failing to communicate
3) Leaving assets directly to minors
4) Ownership and title oversights
5) Failure to properly fund or update your trust
6) Planning only to avoid taxes

(Per San Diego Union Tribune)