The estate planning attorneys at Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation handle not only estate planning, conservatorships, guardianships, and will and trust litigation, but also many probate matters. We receive a lot of calls from individuals who have a lot of questions about probate. Here are some the frequently asked…
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…
During the time you are the appointed guardian of a minor child, you are responsible for providing for all the personal needs of that minor such as food, shelter, education, and health needs. Your responsibilities remain in effect until the child reaches the age of 18 or the guardianship is…
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…
Petitioning the probate court to be appointed the conservator of someone’s person or estate may be necessary when an individual has become legally incapable of taking care of himself or unable to handle his finances, and has not created a durable power of attorney for finances. The majority of the…
Sometimes a trustee of a trust has to be removed for a violation of his fiduciary duties. In California the Probate Code sets forth the various duties a trustee of a trust has to the beneficiaries. Some of these duties are the duty of loyalty, duty not to self deal,…
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…