Estate Planning

April 28, 2009

Swine Flu and Estate Planning

Today a client of mine in Mexico contacted me about the transfer of their membership interest in an LLC upon their death. He had recently been told he had the “Pig Flu” or Swine Flu as we call it in the United States. Hopefully his case is not bad and he will make a full recovery.

His question was simple and perhaps the answer may help others so I am writing about it. He wanted to know whether his membership interest would become his business partners upon his death. Generally a business interest will transfer upon death by a will or trust and not have a payable on death designation. While it would be possible to create a payable on death designation on a small business interest it is not very common. As a result I suggested that the simplest way to deal with the transfer of his interest upon his death would be to do so with a will or other estate planning documents.

Every year people unexpectedly die from regular cases of the flu or other illnesses. Many individuals make changes to their estate planning documents when there are significant changes in their life such as a birth, death, child, move, major financial change. Perhaps the Swine Flu should be a wake up call for the majority of Americans who have no estate planning documents. With out Florida Estate Planning Documents the state of Florida will decide who receives your assets and who would raise your minor children. To review your Florida Estate Planning Documents Contact a Jacksonville Estate Planning Lawyer

April 27, 2009

Keeping Guardianship and Beneficiary Designations Updated

by David M. Goldman

There are many times to update a Florida Will. Most updates are centered around significant life events like a wedding, divorce, new child, death in the family, or even moving to a new state.

Two of the most important things to change in a will are the designations for guardians of minor children and the beneficiaries of your estate or heirs. While Florida law provides that an ex spouse will not be an heir under a will that was created prior to the divorce, the law is not so kind when it comes to assets that do not pass through the probate system such as life insurance or retirement accounts.

All to often Florida Estate Planning Lawyers see cases of Florida Probate where a 401K or other contractual asset was never updated after a divorce. Because these assets are often designed to replace income that is lost, an improper designation can create a financial hardship for the decedent’s family.

April 22, 2009

Helmsley estate: $136M to charity, $1M to dogs

by David M. Goldman

Helmsey’s estate made 53 charitable grants this week. Most of the money was given to hospitals and for medical research. Only 1 Million was given to 10 animal and dog charities equally. These donations came after a New York judge ruled that the trustees for the Helmsley Charitable trust has the sole authority to decide which charities would benefit from the trust.

April 20, 2009

Faith-Based Estate Planning

by David M. Goldman

David A. Atraus, a Nevada Estate Planning Lawyer, has published a book titled Faith-Based Estate Planning: Our Values and Valuables. The book was written after contacting hundreds of religious clergy throughout the nation, and took him several years to write.

Upon a first glance, I was very impressed. The book covers Estate Planning issues like living trusts, wills, medical directives, long-term care insurance and life insurance on many religions including Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity (10 denominations and branches), and 12 more religions from Roman Catholic to Judaism to Zoroastrianism.

It looks very comprehensive and I expect to write more on the book in the future.

April 14, 2009

Digital Assets and Estate Planning

by David M. Goldman

Back in 2006 and 2007 I wrote several articles on Digital Assets and Estate Planning. Now that we are in 2009, there is even more need for Digital Asset protection in your Florida Estate Planning Documents.

Digital assets are those that expire upon your death and are often associated with Email and website accounts. Most of these accounts are not actual property. They are licenses and these licenses generally expire upon your death. A new company Legacy Locker is attempting to solve this problem through a web based tool that stores account login and passwords and purports to transfer this information to the designated beneficiary upon your death or incapacity.

While their software is a good idea it has some issues in that it does not resolve the fact that the license expires upon the death of the person who creates it. One solution to this problem is to create the accounts in the name of a trust of business so that when you die, the entity that owns the license is still in existence. There are other companies that do similar things such as DeathSwitch.com

April 13, 2009

Stop Florida Annuity Scammers from selling Life insurance as an investment

by David M. Goldman

The Palm Beach Post.com has an article which describes a recent trend in Annuities in which scammers sell and churn an insurance policy sold as an annuity in which there are very high surrender fees and limited access to the money for 10 or more years. These policies are being sold to 85 year old individuals as investments when they cannot touch the money for more than 10 years and have very high surrender fees if they do.

Most reputable annuity policies, they say, allow access to the money after just 90 days and require no more than a 5 percent surrender fee, and nothing after five years.

Senate Bill 2520 and House Bill 141 seek to protect Floridians who are 65 and over from annuity scam artists by easing access to the assets and decreasing excessive withdrawal payments. The legislation says that “senior consumers diagnosed as having a terminal illness that will result in death within two years after the diagnosis” could “withdraw all purchase payments from an annuity contract prior to the expiration of the surrender charge period without penalty.”

April 11, 2009

Reviewing wills and trust for compliance with Florida Law

by David M. Goldman

While Florida generally recognizes wills created in another state that were valid at the time they were created, it is often a good idea to have your will reviewed by a Florida Estate Planning Lawyer when you move to Florida.

One problem we often run into is that guardians for minor children who reside in Florida must be a close relative or a resident of the state of Florida. Often people designate non-relatives that do not reside in Florida and these are not effective.

While it is possible to create a trust or other legal instrument to allow a non-resident to manage the property of a minor, this should not be done in a will as it may be ineffective.

April 3, 2009

Estate Planning and Fraudulent Seminars – Updated

by David M. Goldman

It seems like ever few months we hear about another company who provides living trust seminars to the public and scares them into purchasing unnecessary trusts.

Another “Trust Mill” has been found guilty of practicing law without a license by masquerading as qualified financial advisers, estate planners, lawyers, and paralegals to exploit and prey upon senior citizens with the creation and selling of unnecessary and often useless living trusts.

In this case The Estate Plan, a company operating in Texas and Arkansas, was hit with a $16 Million default judgment for fraud, unauthorized practice of law, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and conspiracy.

April 2, 2009

Irrevocable LIfe Insurance Trusts Explained

by David M. Goldman

Gerey Byer of the Wills, Trusts & Estates Professors Blog covered an article on ILITS which discusses issues with Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (“ILITs”) and some of the important issues of determining the proper trustee and which state law to use.

Martin M. Shenkman (Member, Martin M. Shenkman, P.C.) has written a new article entitled The Practical Planner: “Insurance Trusts (ILIT) Not So Simple”, Feb. 2, 2009.

April 2, 2009

Top 100 Twitter Feeds for Law Students

by David M. Goldman

Our twitter feed http://www.twitter.com/guntrustlawyer has been named one of the Top 100 legal feeds