Author Archives: Jay Butchko
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 »
Credit Insurance as an Estate Planning Tactic?
Debt is a source of worry for almost everyone, and once you reach a certain age, you start to worry about how your outstanding debts will affect your family after you die. If you do a Google search for ways to protect your estate from creditor claims, the first results will be about establishing… Read More »
Do You Have to Withdraw Money From Your Retirement Account as Soon as You Retire?
If you are worrying about when to start withdrawing money from your retirement account, this is a good problem to have, because it means that you have a retirement account, and it means that there is money in it. Agonizing over when to retire is more of a fun rite of passage than it… Read More »
Estate Planning for Physicians
Medical doctors are in the habit of assessing risk; they do it at every appointment with every patient, sometimes without even realizing it. Everyone needs an estate plan, but getting started on yours is an especially urgent matter if you fit into one of the major risk categories. Financial advisors quickly swoop down on… Read More »
Are You Too Bougie for Medicaid?
If you have read the news anytime in the past few years, you can easily get the impression that the only people who qualify for Medicaid are desperately poor. Even in blue states like New York, the number of people who are too poor to pay for healthcare and other necessities, but not poor… Read More »
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 »