Scenario When Jane’s mother passed away, she knew she would get a good share of the estate that her mother had grown over the years. She knew that the mother had real estate and money in the bank. When the will was finally read out, she was surprised to discover that the mother hadn’t left…
When 78 year old Anne lost her husband James to an accident, she realized that she had no idea what his passwords were. She couldn’t access his Apple account on the iPhone, iPad and computer that they had stored all their data on. On calling Apple to get help, she was advised that she needs…
Estate planning mistakes can turn out to be expensive than you ever thought. The amount you spend fixing the mistakes – that is if they can be fixed at all – is huge. The situation is simple – when a person makes a mistake in planning their estate and get deceased later on, they won’t…
This article is part of a larger series that presents a number of ways a will or estate plan could be challenged. Taking these potential threats under consideration is critical when planning your estate and they are often overlooked until it’s too late. One of the most important steps in one’s life is creating an…
As stated in the four previously published articles, estate planning is a critical part of one’s life, especially as you get older and/or bring children into the world. The other three articles covered things such as fraudulent signatures and undue influence and how these can affect the validity of an estate plan. When planning for…
Celebrities across the world have entertained us in more ways than one. We have seen tragedies both in life and in death among our favorite celebrities, but there are a few tragedies that go past death, leaving their families trying to grapple with both physical and monetary losses. We are referring to estate planning mistakes…
Business succession planning refers to a series of financial and logistic decisions that you make regarding who takes over your business when you pass away, retire or become incapacitated. When you run a family business, succession is never that simple. You have to account for a lot of things when you transition from one generation…
Trusts are fundamentally considered as a commitment between two people where the trustee holds the principal’s estate in the trust’s name, for the latter’s benefit. However, this simple definition has become much more elaborate as the concept has changed over time. However, when you come down to the basics, the whole concept involves a grantor…
When an individual becomes incapable of making their decisions due to one or more personal reasons that might include poor health, some kind of injury or other unfortunate situations, one can put a power of attorney (POA) into place that can assist their loved ones in making difficult and necessary decisions and judgments on their…
When we talk about the most obvious difference between two common tax types; inheritance taxes and estate taxes, it mainly comes down to the payee of the tax. When an individual dies, these two terms are often interchanged. However, these are two entirely different kinds of death taxes. The calculation of inheritance taxes is usually…