Category Archives: Estate Planning
Back to School Estate Planning
Once the school year starts, the feeling is anticlimactic, and you don’t know what to do with all this free time. Take a few moments, before the major school assignments start coming due, and work on your estate plan. Planning for the worst helps you stop sweating the small stuff, at least temporarily. If… Read More »
Getting Through Probate Painlessly
No one wants a messy probate case, but chances are that you will not have to deal with one. Almost anyone who is wealthy enough that their estate would have to pay taxes can afford to appoint a lawyer as personal representative of their estate; you don’t stay wealthy until you die unless you… Read More »
Are Pet Trusts Necessary?
Your estate plan shows how much you care, even if you do not have a lot of property to leave to the beneficiaries of your estate. Simply by writing a medical advance directive indicating your wishes about medical treatment during your final illness, you are saving your family untold amounts of stress. If you… Read More »
In Terrorem Clauses in Maryland Wills
Except for what goes on in criminal courts, legal proceedings do not generally make good television or good plot-driven fiction. Unless you are exceptionally long in the tooth and longer in the attention span, you have probably not read Bleak House by Charles Dickens; it is the only fictional representation of a probate court… Read More »
The Senior Mortgage Borrower
By now, the word has gotten around that young people cannot afford to qualify for a home mortgage and buy a home. Their only hope for doing this is their parents, who can leverage their cash savings or, if necessary, their home equity, to provide money for a down payment, or else leverage their… Read More »
Long-Term Care Reality Check
You might think that your estate plan adequately accounts for long-term care insurance, but you probably have an unrealistic view of how much you have to pay. According to a recent report on the CNBC Personal Finance website, 57 percent of the people who retired in 2024 will eventually need to spend more than… Read More »
Your Fabulous First Year of Retirement
In less catastrophic times, estate planning lawyers used to tell their clients to follow the four percent rule. They said that you can expect 25 years of retirement, and if you only spend four percent of your retirement savings per year, you will have enough to last the rest of your life. More recently,… Read More »
In Praise of Old Folks’ Homes
If you are old enough to have a stable job, you are old enough to be cringe. Since both of these describe you, it stands to reason that you have read the latest research on happiness. A recent article in the New York Times says that what determines how happy we are is not… Read More »
Senior Medicaid Isn’t Just for Nursing Home Residents
In Maryland, as in many other places in the United States and the world, we have an aging population. Meanwhile, the generation that is currently approaching retirement age has never known the financial safeguards that their parents’ generation enjoyed. This means that we are likely to see an increase in demand for applications for… Read More »
Medicare: So Many Moving Parts
If you are looking for a way to boost your self-confidence, consider congratulating yourself on your longevity. You have been receiving correspondence from the AARP for such a long time that their magazines and oversized postcards, clearly designed for the generation that takes print media more seriously than online content, no longer make you… Read More »
