Estate Planning

What do each of the following situations have in common?   A 73-year-old man suffers a stroke, becomes paralyzed and unable to speak or write. A married couple signs a contract for sale of real estate. Between the date of signing the contract and the date of closing, the wife falls and suffers a brain [...]

It is very common for persons to procrastinate in preparing a Will, Trust, or other estate planning documents. But, have you ever thought about it this way?  If you haven’t prepared your own Will or Trust, you are letting the Florida Legislature decide who will inherit your property.   For those persons who have not [...]

Making a plan for your retirement is an important thing to do.  This includes planning for incapacity and death by having an estate plan (a Will, power of attorney, advance health care directives and a trust is applicable) and also planning for your financial future.  Recently, changes were made that will affect those claiming Social [...]

On October 26th, the Firm’s Elder Law Attorney, Elizabeth P. Allen, put on a free advance healthcare directives clinic at Horizon Bay Lutz, an independent and assisted living facility in Lutz, Florida.  She provided information on living wills and designations of healthcare surrogates, recent changes in the law on designations and she provided those legal [...]

This week is National Estate Planning Awareness Week. It's always a good idea to review your estate plan from time to time. That is especially true if you’ve had life changing events (such as marriage, divorce, birth of children, death of family members, health changes). If you don’t have an estate plan in place, now [...]

Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog topic dealt mainly with terms that deal with things once you die. What about while you’re still alive? What happens if you become disabled and/or incapacitated and not able to do things for yourself? That’s where Part 3 of this Legal Words topic comes in.   If [...]

Part 1 of this blog topic identified a few estate planning legal terms and explained what they mean. Part 2 continues with more estate planning terms. In Part 1, one of the terms defined was Probate - the court-supervised process for administering an estate after someone dies.   But is there a way to avoid that [...]

Lawyers often use words that are unfamiliar. What’s even worse is that often, legal terminology is not even consistent throughout the states. Additionally, a legal concept, such as “Homestead” can have several different meanings in different situations.   The area of Estate Planning is full of legal terms that you should know and understand. Let’s [...]