Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Filial Responsibility and Maryland Law
Caring for elderly parents can be financially burdensome, no matter the circumstances. People who do not live near their parents may contribute to the cost of home health aide services or nursing home care. They might co-sign with their parents so that the son or daughter is legally responsible for the nursing home bills… Read More »
The Generous Aunt’s Dilemma
You are proud of the many roles you play in life, as a professional mentor, a cat mom, and a well-traveled and well-read person. People are impressed with your credentials, your resourcefulness, and your repeated triumphs over adversity, but the title of which you are the proudest is “cool aunt.” You have worn this… Read More »
Payment for the Personal Representative of an Estate
Most of the time, the rewards for the services you perform for your family are not financial ones. Sometimes it is easy to doubt that there are any rewards at all. When you were young, your parents spat out disapproval at anything you did; you got the same response whether you tried to please… Read More »
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 »
