Florida Asset Protection Trusts: Can they be changed? In Florida, both revocable and irrevocable trusts are valuable estate planning tools that permit individuals to organize and protect their assets from creditors. The Florida Asset Protection trust is not used by many estate planning lawyers. Asset Protection is an important part…
News and Important information for Seniors and their Families. In this issue, we discuss the following topics. How to Bulletproof your estate plan Trying to treat siblings equally The importance of taking the emotional value of family heirlooms into consideration Taking previous loans or gifts into consideration Proving you’re of…
The Florida District Court of Appeals recently applied a little known doctrine called the Doctrine of Dependent Relative Revocation in the case of In Re Estate of Murphy to save an estate from passing through intestacy. The owner of the estate was Virginia Murphy. Mrs. Murphy died in 2006 and…
One issue that occurs in estate planning is whether or not a charitable pledge can be enforced on a person’s estate after death. Wealthy individuals often make pledges to their favorite charitable organizations during their lifetime, only to die before fulfilling the pledge. Executors are then placed in the difficult…
Many women in today’s world stay single by choice, and for those women who are married, we know divorce rates are very high. Studies also show that women are far more likely to survive their husbands. Therefore, we advise all women to create estate plans as if they are a…
There is a myth that trusts and estate planning are for the rich only, but this is actually a common misconception. Estate planning for high net worth individuals usually centers on reducing tax bills, but estate planning has a number of benefits and objectives depending on a client’s needs. An…
A trust is one of the most important estate planning tools available and can be used to achieve almost any estate plan’s purpose. A trust can even be drafted with provisions to allow the settlor, or the person who creates the trust, to set conditions for the beneficiaries to meet…
Here at the Law Office of David M. Goldman, we come across many estate-planning problems that can be avoided by careful planning and forethought. With higher estate tax exemptions most individuals don’t have to consider avoiding estate taxes, so we often recommend a person’s estate planning goal be to leave…
Elder fraud is becoming a growing concern as the baby boomers are beginning to retire and are not well versed in the latest technology. Recent studies show that senior citizens are being defrauded through Internet and telephone scams. As an estate planner and elder law specialist, I thought I would…
With the recent Supreme Court ruling making headlines for allowing same-sex couples to get married, the unnoticed effect of this monumental ruling is how it will affect the estate planning for couples that can now tie the knot. Same-sex married couples now have the same estate planning and tax…