Many clients want to know how they can benefit their grandchildren while grandma and grandpa are still alive. One way is under the California Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. This law in California allows you to give gifts to minors under the age of a 18. The gift may be…
Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion, died in 2008 and yet the fight over his estate goes on. You may remember Bobby Fischer won the world chess championship in 1972 when he beat the Russian Boris Spassky in Iceland during the period of the cold war. Fischer was born…
An ILIT is an irrevocable life insurance trust. The purpose of an ILIT is to cause life insurance death benefits to be excluded from a decedent’s taxable estate. With the usual life insurance policy owned by a decedent, the death benefits are part of the decedent’s estate and subject to…
National Women’s Health Week is a weeklong health observance coordinated by the U.S. Dept. of Heath and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. It runs from May 8 – May 14 and encourages women to take steps to improve their physical and mental health. The theme this year is “It’s…
Your friend or parent has asked you to be the successor trustee of his trust. Is there anything you should ask before accepting such a responsibility? Yes, yes, yes. You may think that being asked to handle someone’s estate is not that hard but sometimes being a trustee can be…
The recent case of Estate of Stoker, decided in a California Appellate Court, involved an interesting way one person revoked his living trust. Steven Stoker signed a will in 1997 in which he left the bulk of his estate to the Steven Stoker Revocable Trust, which he created at the…
In today’s high tech world, it’s difficult sometimes to get through to a human to address your concerns when you call the bank, the cable company, public agencies, etc. Sometimes you feel like there is no live person who is working there. Now there is a website, GetHuman.com. which tells…
An appraisal is a professional’s estimate of the value of one’s property. The item to be appraised can be a small item like a piece of jewelry or something larger, like a residence or office building. Appraisals play a role in various aspects of estate plannng. When someone dies with…
In our last blog, we discussed how a special needs trust may be a necessary part of your estate plan if you want to provide for an individual with a disability. A special needs trust, sometimes called a supplemental needs trust is one that must contain specific language and must…
Coming up next week is National Autism Day which was established to raise awareness about autism. Wear blue to show your support. The incidence of autism is on the rise with approximately 1 in 110 children in the United States being diagnosed with the disease, according to the Center for…