Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Safe Places to Keep Your Will
If you have written a will, you are within your rights to feel a great sense of relief. Even if you never get around to making more progress on your estate plan, you have still taken the important first step. Your will is not really complete, though, until you complete the formal requirements to… Read More »
Self-Proving Affidavits
Writing a will means stating your wishes in a final form. As long as you are alive, you can backpedal on your statements. People can badger you or intimidate you into changing your position, or if you refuse to let them do this, it can lead to a rift in your relationship. Your will… Read More »
Be Generous Now, Not Just When You Are on Death’s Doorstep
New York City’s reputation for misanthropy is largely undeserved. Everywhere you go, you see smiling faces. All the people you know and love live in New York. Yes, the young people walk fast, but they will slow down to let an elderly slowpoke board the subway. Sometimes, though, it makes sense that the voice… Read More »
Can You Procrastinate Your Way Out of Probate?
Estate planning is a long list of tasks that everyone puts off. If you have the patience for such a slow-paced drama, then it can be interesting to speculate about which of the tasks the testator will get around to completing before he or she goes the way of all flesh. Unfortunately, death does… Read More »
Life Estate Deeds
When you search the Internet for estate planning advice, it is easy to get the feeling that most of it was written for people who are wealthier than you. It seems that the target audience for the blog posts and AI summaries about how and why to keep assets out of probate is someone… Read More »
Will a Life Estate Deed Protect Your House From Medicaid Creditor Claims?
How complicated is it to keep your property out of probate? It depends on what kind of property it is and what kind of non-probate asset category you use. Transferring a house to a trust is so complicated that it is only worthwhile if doing so is the only way to prevent a major… Read More »
What Can Go Wrong If You Don’t Update Your Estate Plan When You Divorce?
This feeling that there is little standing between you and what you always wanted, but that you feel completely lost about making the first move toward a feeling of stability or relief is familiar. You felt this early in your marriage. You looked forward to meeting your special someone, and when you met your… Read More »
Saving for Retirement Beyond the 401(k) Account
Estate planning lawyers often tell clients during their initial consultations, or even proclaim on their websites, that if you have a retirement account at all, you are doing better than most, and that the worst mistake you can make is not saving anything for retirement. This can create an excessive sense of complacency or… Read More »
New York Disinterment Laws
The term interment refers to the conveyance of human remains to their final resting place. When you learned the word as a vocabulary word in middle school English class, your textbook probably said that it was a synonym for burial. As a legal term, interment has a slightly broader meaning. It is a synonym… Read More »
Meet the Seniors Who Don’t Tell Their Spouses the Whole Truth About Their Finances
Dishonesty about money has ruined many marriages. When you think of financial infidelity, you might imagine young couples who spend impulsively and then, out of embarrassment or conflict avoidance, don’t tell their spouses, and then when the other spouse finds out about the secret debts, a sense of betrayal compounds the financial stress, putting… Read More »