Will Category Archives — Page 2 of 2 — Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog Published by Jacksonville, Florida Wills & Trusts Attorneys

June 3, 2015

What documents do young adults need?

It’s hard to believe that when your child turns 18 years old, he or she is legally an adult. When a child reaches this milestone, the mother and father’s parental rights have terminated. This means that if the child experiences a medical emergency, the parent may not be able to help or even receive information on the child’s well being without the property authority.

A parent loses parental rights over their children due to a number of privacy laws. One important law is FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which restricts the information a school can release about an adult student. The other is HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which limit those to whom health care providers can release data.

June 1, 2015

BB King Heirs to Challenge his Will

by David M. Goldman

BB King’s heirs have alleged the blues legend’s business manager has misappropriated millions of dollars and unduly influenced his estate. A lawyer representing BB King’s heirs told the press the heirs would seek to challenge the will and the actions of the manager as undue influence.

The law allows the heirs of an estate to challenge wills in cases of undue influence, fraud, or mental incapacity. The heirs of BB King’s estate have long suspected King’s manager La Verne Toney had misappropriated millions of dollars and had undue influence over his estate planning decisions. The law requires the testator to pass away before his estate or will can be challenged. Therefore, the heirs of BB King’s estate were unable to challenge the alleged undue influence until now.

Undue influence is where a beneficiary, or other party with standing, alleges a third person has so influenced the testator’s mind by persuasion that the testator did not act voluntarily when executing his will.

In Florida, the person challenging a will under a theory of “undue influence” has the burden to establish the presumption of undue influence. This means that the person being accused is given the benefit of the doubt that he or she acted appropriately unless some evidence shows otherwise. The elements of showing undue influence are: Continue reading

May 22, 2015

Important Clauses to include in a will or revocable trust

by David M. Goldman

Here at the Law Office of David Goldman, we wanted to list some of the more important clauses that might be used in a Florida will or Florida Living Trust. Every person who makes a will or trust has different circumstances and therefore every will or trust is designed with that person’s specific needs in mind. Many of these clauses might not be needed in your will or trust, but we like to include them anyway in case the unexpected happens to you or your family. We urge our clients to learn about these clauses, so they can decide if these clauses might help to meet their estate-planning needs or how they may want to make changes to deal with their specific family circumstances.

Disaster Clause

This clause deals with what happens if both spouses or a beneficiary die at the same time. This will or trust usually states that a spouse’s assets will only be transferred to the second spouse or beneficiary if the second spouse survives the first spouse by a certain time period. This period is usually 30 days. This clause can help to prevent the confusion of where assets should go based upon who died first. The time limit can be increased to add additional protection, but this can delay distributions also.