To mix things up to distribute assets, once everyone has had an opportunity to make their first selection, the person who drew the largest number can start the second round, continuing in reverse sequential order. For the third round, the person who drew number 1 can start, and the selections continue in sequential order.
Category Archives: Estate Planning
When to start planning for your estate depends on your goals and the size and complexity of your estate. If your estate involves business interests, multiple properties, significant investments, or complex family dynamics, creating a comprehensive plan may require more time.
When crafting your estate plan, it is important to understand what you have and who you want to leave it to. But you may also want to speak with your beneficiaries before creating your plan to find out if the person you plan to give an item to wants the item, particularly if the item has storage or maintenance requirements that the person will be responsible for.
Christmas and birthday gifts can leave lasting impressions on your grandchildren, but you may want to provide them with a gift that can assist them in building a savings account, furthering their education, or purchasing their first home, to name just a few. We hope this information will assist you in analyzing the important details of making a gift that can often be overlooked.
When someone dies, the outstanding debt fails to disappear. In fact, debt survives the death of the creditor. At that point, the amount owed transfers to the creditor’s estate. In fact, a debt owed to the estate is considered an estate asset. The estate is entitled to collect the debt as part of the probate process.
A husband may move out of the home he shared with his wife and have limited or no contact with her or their children. An abused child who lives with a relative may avoid contact with their parent. A parent may choose not to associate with a child who has committed crimes or abused their trust. These types of situations are unfortunate and occur more often than we would like. Limited contact, or even the absence of any contact, fails to majorly impact the legal right of an estranged spouse or child to inherit from their family member. This is especially true if no estate plan expresses an intention to disinherit them.
When one spouse is the “money person” in the relationship, it can create issues in both life and death. To avoid unnecessary stress, couples need to ensure that they are on the same page. For day-to-day finances, this can mean regular check-ins about charges, expenditures, and budgeting. About estate planning, couples should keep each other informed about the location of important documents such as the following:
Payable on death and transfer on death sound ominous; and while the topic of death is always somewhat gloomy, POD and TOD are estate planning terms that financial account holders should be familiar with.
The first step is to figure out what accounts the deceased had by looking through their mail, email, or phone notifications. You may get lucky, as the deceased may have compiled a list as part of their estate plan. Once you have identified what accounts were in the deceased’s name, you can move on to the next step of deciding whether to cancel or keep them.
It is understandable why people do not want to talk or think about death. But dying without a will takes power out of the individual’s hands and puts it in the hands of the state and its one-size-fits-all intestacy laws. Here is the law in California, where Skvarna Law Firm is located: