Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Physically Destroying A Will Is The Most Effective Way To Cancel It
If you reread documents that you wrote many years ago, whether they are personal letters written on paper or archived blog posts from the salad days of Geocities, you will probably immediately notice how much your ideas have changed; you may barely resemble the version of yourself that wrote those old texts. You don’t… Read More »
Is It Time To Revise Your Estate Plan?
Reevaluating Your Choice of Personal Representative While it is important to review your estate plan periodically, the good news is that you do not need to rewrite your entire estate plan from scratch every year. (Divorce is almost the only event that requires you to start over again from zero with your estate plan.) … Read More »
When Multiple Companies Are In Charge Of A Real Estate Property, Lawsuits Get Complicated
The pitfalls and annoyances of being a landlord are well known; if you want to avert a family feud at a holiday gathering by avoiding discussions about politics, you can just ask your uncle who rents out a house that he owns about how much the tenants get on his nerves. Disputes between landlords… Read More »
The Least Risky Ways To Get Started Investing In Real Estate
Some cynical articles have gone as far as to say that getting paid to do nothing is the new American dream. In fact, the quest for passive income is nothing new; Americans have been searching for it for at least as long as jobs where you could earn a reliable income and build up… Read More »
Maryland Business Owners, Are You Ready For The Great Onboarding Of 2022?
The Great Resignation of 2021 is yesterday’s news, and in just a few days, it will be last year’s news. For business owners, the new year is not only a time to get all your documents in order so you can file corporate taxes; it is also a time to reflect on what you… Read More »
Aging In Place Probably Means Remodeling Your Home Sooner Or Later
One of the worst things about ringing in the new year is the realization that you are another year older, and another year has passed without you and your spouse talking openly with each other or with other family members about the fact that you are getting old. Getting visits from your children and… Read More »
The New CFPB Rules Are Here: You Can Now Contact Customers About Payment Through Social Media
Social media has hardly improved anyone’s personal relationships, but it has been beneficial to businesses of all sizes. Businesses have benefited from user-generated content that mentions their brands or products, and the popularity of a business spreads even more quickly on social media than it does through old-fashioned word of mouth. During the lean… Read More »
Small Businesses Are Great For The Economy
If you are thinking about establishing a small business, you have everything to gain by doing so, and so does the community around you. As jobs that offer stability and generous benefits packages become harder to find among large employers, many industrious, enterprising people have been taking matters into their own hands and forming… Read More »
The Grinch’s Guide To The Annual Gift Tax Exclusion
In 2020, financial stress, travel restrictions, and caution about exposure to rapidly surging COVID-19 variants put a damper on many families’ holiday cheer. This year, some of those families are determined to have a fabulous celebration, but some realized, during quiet times at home and joyous exchanges of holiday greetings over Zoom, that going… Read More »
What Is The Difference Between A CID And EIN For Businesses?
Many industries have developed an “alphabet soup” of acronyms that make perfect sese to industry insiders but are utterly incomprehensible to anyone outside the occupation. Just listen to two people with federal jobs refer to the federal agencies with which they deal in the course of your work, or try reading your own medical… Read More »
