Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Having a Plan for More Than Just Finances Can Protect You From the Retirement Curse
Most of us take comfort in the fact that our circumstances will change substantially at some point in the future. We only have to suffer in the heat, paying more than we can afford for air conditioning, until the summer ends. Eventually, we will grow up and move out of our parents’ house, even… Read More »
Can You Have a Better Retirement Than Your Parents?
Some of the online content about achieving better financial circumstances is manipulative, and some of it is downright mean-spirited. It might play on your wishes to buy your mother a house that she can decorate to her own tastes after she spent your entire childhood living in rented accommodations, spending all her time off… Read More »
Delaying Probate Can Be an Act of Self-Care
Procrastinating your own estate plan only makes sense; only the most organized and the most worry-prone people get started on their estate plans before they turn 60, unless something scary happens in their lives that makes them acutely aware of their own mortality. There is little incentive to make plans for what will happen… Read More »
Situations Where You Should Hire a Lawyer During Probate
In most actions that involve the civil courts, a substantial number of litigants represent themselves, or at least take the preliminary steps in the case before realizing that they need to hire a lawyer. In family courts, people file fall divorce, attend mediation, and draft marital settlement agreements without professional legal representation. In the… Read More »
Calculating Personal Representative Compensation Is Not as Simple as It Sounds
Most of the work you do to help your family is unpaid. There are certain corners of the Internet that calculate, down to the last penny, how much it would cost to pay someone for all the things you have done for your children, from keeping infants fed, cuddled, and safe to transporting older… Read More »
Questions to Ask Before Agreeing to Be the Grantor of a Family Member’s Trust
A trust, revocable or irrevocable, is a non-probate asset. This means that it does not become part of the grantor’s estate when the grantor dies, so probate proceedings do not affect the trust or its property. This means that the court is not involved in the daily operations of the trust. The courts do… Read More »
Calculating Personal Representative Compensation Is Not as Simple as It Sounds
Most of the work you do to help your family is unpaid. There are certain corners of the Internet that calculate, down to the last penny, how much it would cost to pay someone for all the things you have done for your children, from keeping infants fed, cuddled, and safe to transporting older… Read More »
Questions to Ask Before Agreeing to Be the Grantor of a Family Member’s Trust
A trust, revocable or irrevocable, is a non-probate asset. This means that it does not become part of the grantor’s estate when the grantor dies, so probate proceedings do not affect the trust or its property. This means that the court is not involved in the daily operations of the trust. The courts do… Read More »
Trust Disputes and How to Prevent Them
When you sign a trust instrument, you might do so with a smug smile, thinking that you are a classy person who has done a classy thing. While the nouveau riche drag their relatives’ reputations through the mud in probate court as they fight over their newly acquired fortune, you keep your generational wealth… Read More »
How to Contest a Deceased Family Member’s Will
The most common reason that the surviving family members of a recently deceased person dread probate is that it involves the payment of debts and taxes. Probate is a grim reminder that not even death can spare you from some financial obligations. Whoever said that the only things that are certain in life are… Read More »