Estate Planning for Digital Assets is becoming a more important part of our estate planning. While most online accounts simply expire when you die, Facebook has recently incorporated some changes to your account so you can specify what happens when you die. Until recently, loved ones of the deceased only…
The amount you can give anyone without having to file a gift tax return in 2015 remains the same as 2014 at $14,000. Remember that you can give your children, their spouses, your grandkids $14,000 each. In addition, if you are married, your spouse can also gift $14,000 to each…
If you have been told, don’t worry about your IRA it is protected because Florida has statutory protections for IRAs, you may have misunderstood or been mislead. While Florida does have statutory protection for inherited IRA’s, this protection only applies if your beneficiaries are residents of Florida at the time…
We often get asked about the iPug™ Trust and how it can be so different than a traditional revocable trust or a standard irrevocable trust. The iPug™ takes the best parts of an irrevocable trust and mixes them with the best parts of a revocable trust to create a new…
Many times we get questions from clients asking if their revocable trust provides asset protection from creditors. The answer to this is the typical legal answer “It Depends”. That is it depends on who owes the money. In Florida a revocable trust can provide some limited protection against the creditors…
You can use a website or create your own will in Florida, but we find that some people do not create valid wills, or create wills that do things other than what they want. We only charge $200 for a will so an online will does not save very much…
Many people see joint accounts as a cheap and easy way to avoid probate, since joint property passes to the join owner at death, but these accounts can actually be quite risky when it comes to estate planning. Joint ownership of accounts can be a great way to easily pass…
If your family works in a high stress profession is a good idea to make sure you and your family keep their estate plans up to date. The unexpected deaths of finance workers in the past few months by suicide around the world have raised concerns about mental health and…
Planning an estate can be a difficult process, but also a rewarding one because it helps to ensure that a person’s heirs will be provided for after he or she dies. Many assume they should wait until after death to convey assets to their loved ones, but there are some…
The Florida Supreme Court recently decided the long and costly case of a deceased woman who tried to write her own Will using an online legal form. In Aldrich, v. Basile, Ann Aldrich used a pre-printed legal form to draft a Will. She did this most likely to avoid paying…