Imagine this: You’ve built a business empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars, transformed a city’s downtown area, and touched countless lives with your vision and generosity. Then, unexpectedly, you pass away—and nearly five years later, a will you may have created suddenly appears. Meanwhile, your family has been battling creditors, former associates, and mounting...Read More

When it comes to estate planning, I get many questions about many topics. One of the most common questions I hear concerns account ownership and asset management. Understanding how accounts are titled and who has access to them isn’t just about convenience—it’s about ensuring your assets transfer smoothly to your loved ones while protecting them...Read More

BLENDED FAMILIES + DEATH = A POTENTIAL NIGHTMARE Anyone who’s seen an episode of “Modern Family” knows that families these days come in many different shapes and sizes. Long gone are the days when a “family” was defined as a mother, father and two children (or was it 2.5 children? Where does the .5 come...Read More

WHAT IS PROBATE Unless you’ve created a proper estate plan, when you die many of your assets must first pass through the court process known as probate before those assets can be distributed to your heirs. Like most court proceedings, probate can be time-consuming, costly, and open to the public, and because of this, avoiding...Read More

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” If you don’t have a trust and your estate is larger than $150,000, then your heirs can count on the certainty of Probate too. Probate is a court supervised process necessary to transfer assets to the decedent’s beneficiaries when a person dies without a...Read More