Author Archives: Jay Butchko
The Perils of Being a Trustee
Trust between two people is something pure and priceless. It means that each one assumes that the other does not have ulterior motives. Whoever said that money is the root of all evil must have been thinking of trust law. People place their money in a trust because they want it to fly under… Read More »
Is Assisted Living as Stress-Free as It Sounds?
Some people constantly fret about the messy, cluttered state of their houses, while others wear it as a badge of pride. Of course you didn’t have time to organize your bedroom closet. You work 40 hours per week, and you spend your evenings helping your children with their homework or answering work emails while… Read More »
What Happens to Your Estate Plan When You Divorce?
If you look for it, you can find aspirational content about people who claim that divorce gave them a new lease on life. Most of it is selling you false hope. While you might feel relieved about getting out of an unhappy marriage, you might be among the large group of recently divorced people… Read More »
Important Probate Deadlines
Your most impressive feats of adulting do not take place until the people who always thought that you were useless were gone. By the time you transported your children to multiple extracurricular activities while also keeping up with all your responsibilities at work, your parents were no longer healthy enough to notice. Your children… Read More »
Who Needs Probate Lawyers?
In every probate case, the court appoints someone as personal representative of the estate. If the decedent wrote a will, the court appoints the person that the testator listed as personal representative. If there is no will, then the court usually appoints the person who petitioned the court to open the estate for probate…. Read More »
Is Insurance Your Ticket Out of Creditor Claims During Probate?
Once you get past the estate planning conversations about sunset walks on the beach and spoiling your grandchildren at the holidays, the subject often turns to expenses that a deceased person’s estate can incur, the things that will diminish the value of your property between your death and when your heirs receive their inheritance…. Read More »
Early Withdrawals From Retirement Accounts
Some people fret about the account balances of their retirement accounts getting too big. They study spreadsheets, plugging in values for when their required minimum distributions (RMDs) will start and trying to figure out how much they will owe in taxes on the money that the law requires them to take out of their… Read More »
Keep Your House Out of Probate With a Life Estate Deed
When young people get married, they do it with big dreams about their careers that are just starting and about the children that will be born to them in the future. Even the most pragmatic people often face disappointments later in life about how achieving those dreams is harder than it looks. By contrast,… Read More »
Return That Security Deposit
One of the hardest parts of operating any small business, including being a residential landlord, is chasing people around for individual payments. For landlords, maintenance of your rental units is also a major source of stress. After a tenant moves out, you want to get the apartment looking move-in ready as quickly as possible,… Read More »
How to Inherit a 401(k) Account
Inheriting property is not as glamorous as it sounds. It is often as much work to gain possession of the property as it would be to earn an equal amount of money through employment. If you inherit a real estate property, you must pay property taxes on it, and you are responsible for all… Read More »
