The Plain English Attorney Blog
Far too many attorneys overcomplicate things, making topics convoluted and difficult to understand to the average person. This blog is committed to explaining legal planning topics in an easy to understand format, in plain English. Enjoy the blogs, and please let us know if there is a topic you would like covered.
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Many of my long-time estate planning clients have commented on my weight loss over and asked how I did it. While fitness isn’t really related to estate or Medicaid planning, or even law in general, I do think that this fitness journey has made me a better person and better professional....
When an estate goes through probate, privacy is out the door worse than Beyonce taking a stroll down Rodeo Drive. In this outtake from the webinar “Estate Planning… Bigger Than Beyonce” I review the loss of privacy that occurs to an estate mired in this court process. For the...
"Hearsay is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” In this reaction video, I explain in plain English the definition of ‘hearsay’ that kept popping up in the...
Many of our estate planning clients have chosen to use a Revocable Living Trust as a way to avoid probate of their estate as much as possible when they pass on. Unfortunately, just having the documents set up is not enough to avoid probate. The process of “trust funding,” meaning...
“Probate fees in our state are not that high.” Unfortunately, I hear this from some attorneys who focus their practice on handling probate, and probate is exactly what you get when you rely on a Last Will and Testament for your estate plan. Considering the massive attorney's fees...
This question keeps coming up... "Does a trust need a separate taxpayer identification number?" It depends. In general...
* Revocable Living Trusts do not need an EIN/Taxpayer ID if the Trustor(s) are still alive
* Irrevocable Trusts generall DO need a separate EIN
* Hybrid Irrevocable...
Sometimes something that is “common knowledge” is just a myth, and myths are prevalent in estate planning for special needs beneficiaries. For example,
* MYTH: You can't leave an inheritance to to a beneficiary with special needs.
* MYTH: You should...
One of the hot new investment trends is NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens. Because it is so new, questions come up about how this investment is funded into a revocable living trust. In this video, I run through the basics of NFTs and how they need to be titled to work with your revocable living trust...
When it comes to special government programs, what on the surface appears to be a good deal may not really be to your advantage or especially to your estate beneficiaries. Unfortunately, chances are that you are already invested in once these “deals” That is, unless you know all of...
It seems that everything these days moves faster, and we just don’t have enough time to look at things as thoroughly as we need to. Even when it comes to topics that can be critical to improving our lives, people don’t have the time to piece together information from multiple sources...
Taking an estate through probate can be one of the most expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating experiences someone can go through. While a large part of my legal practice is focused on estate planning that avoids probate, sometimes there is just no choice. To help answer some questions about...
How do you destroy your own well-crafted, strategically created, solid estate plan in one move? In this podcast, I cover how one of our most airtight estate plans drafted specifically to benefit a grandson with special needs ended up being placed in jeopardy… because the clients decided to...
