Category Archives: Estate Planning
Power of Attorney in New York: What You Need to Know Before Signing
Designating other people as representatives to make transactions with your property is a major part of estate planning. For example, when you write a will, you designate a personal representative for your estate; he or she will conduct transactions on behalf of your estate. Likewise, when you establish a trust, the trust instrument names… Read More »
Estate Planning for Blended Families in New York: What to Consider
Conflict between stepparents and stepchildren is a source of virtually endless interesting discourse. Once the drinks start to flow, your friends will tell you about how no one can push their buttons quite like their stepchildren; stepchildren are a reminder that your spouse has never belonged exclusively to you, and you will never have… Read More »
New York Estate Tax Explained: How to Protect Your Heirs
Reasonable minds can disagree about where the dividing line lies between prosperity and financial hardship. Some people would draw the line at whether you get an income tax refund or whether you owe money to the IRS after you honestly enter your income, tax credits, and tax deductions into the mathematical formula for calculating… Read More »
Special Needs Trusts in New York: Providing for Loved Ones With Disabilities
When estate laws are a plot point in movies or TV shows, it is usually to highlight the greed of someone who owns property or stands to inherit it, or else as a deus ex machina in which a sudden influx of inherited money enables the characters to solve their problems. In most cases,… Read More »
The Top 7 Mistakes People Make in Estate Planning and How to Avoid Them
Your estate plan does not have to be perfect. There is probably no such thing as a perfect estate plan. Glaring errors in estate planning can make life more difficult for your heirs, though. Most estate planning mistakes simply cause delays or preventable expenses during probate, but the worst ones can cause long-lasting family… Read More »
Pet Trusts in New York: How to Legally Protect Your Furry Friends
There once was a Maltese dog named Trouble. He belonged to a wealthy heiress. When she died, she left behind a trust with millions of dollars for Trouble’s care. This sparked a major legal dispute. The problem was not that the testator had established a trust for Trouble’s care; you can set up a… Read More »
Estate Planning Before Buying a Home in New York: What You Should Know
It’s strange how our favorite trends age as we do. Rock music was once considered the exclusive province of young people, and now familiarity with the music of bands like the Beatles and The Who immediately brands you as old. Even the things we considered a universal hallmark of youth, such as dating, have… Read More »
Wills vs. Trusts: Which Is Right for You in New York?
People who are old enough to have gotten started on their estate plans are outspoken about how little they understand generative artificial intelligence, but even we old folks understand that Chat GPT and its imitators do not think; rather, they only remix what humans said in the human-written web content that chatbots use as… Read More »
How to Avoid Probate in New York (and Why You Should)
Despite what you see in the movies, inheriting money does not feel like winning the lottery, at least not the kind of winning the lottery where you just hand your scratch off ticket to the gas station cashier and walk away with the money. The hurdles you must clear to get your inherited money… Read More »
How to Choose the Right Estate Planning Lawyer in New York City
It is possible to build your estate plan from beginning to end without hiring a lawyer, provided that your estate plan is simple. People have the right to represent themselves in many legal matters, including probate, so the personal representative of your estate might be able to settle your estate without a lawyer. Some… Read More »