4 Tips For Talking About Estate Planning With Your Family Over The Holidays

The holidays are here, and there's no better time than now to talk about your estate planning.

Estate planning is a topic that you probably don't think about very often, but it's one of the most important—and potentially confusing—decisions you'll make in your lifetime. After what happened for the past two years, talking about these issues is particularly urgent this time around.

That said, asking your dad about his end-of-life wishes while he’s watching football isn’t the best way to broach the subject. In order to make the talk as productive as possible, consider the following four tips.

How to Pass Down Your Family Wealth Legacy During The Holidays

As you likely already know, but may not have given much thought about, the most important inheritance you provide is so much more than the money you’ll leave behind, but also includes your values, insights, stories, and experience. And, while those things are being passed on happenstance on the daily, we know that intentionally creating a Family Wealth Legacy requires more than happenstance. That’s why as a Personal Family Lawyer®, part of our unique planning process is to capture your legacy in recorded form through something we call a Family Wealth Legacy Interview.

10 Things You Should Know About Living Wills

When it comes to estate planning, you’ve most likely heard people mention a couple of different types of wills. The most common is a “last will and testament,” which is also known simply as a “will.” But you may have also heard people talk about what’s called a “living will.”

Both terms describe important legal documents used in estate planning, but their purpose and the way in which they work is very different. Here we are going to discuss some of the most critical things you should know about living wills, and explain why having one is an essential part of every adult’s estate plan and how to get yours created or updated.

With Tax Laws in Flux: What Should You Do Now?

Due to the time, it takes to plan and execute some of the financial and estate planning actions we’d support you with, we suggest you start strategizing now. However, please note that we expect to be quite busy with those who do decide to take action before year’s end, so please contact us as soon as possible to get onto the calendar, if you intend to make changes to your estate plan this year.

That way, you’ll have plenty of time to take appropriate action before the end of 2021. In addition, whether you will be impacted by any of these proposed changes or not, if you know that this is the time to get your affairs in order and have trusted guidance to do so, please contact us, your Personal Family Lawyer® as well, so we can get your planning handled before year’s end. Now is the time to get started.

Last week in part one, we discussed the new bill’s proposed changes to tax rates and estate planning vehicles, including several different types of trusts. Here, in part two, we’ll focus on what you should do now, given that the tax law is in flux and we may not have clear answers until close to the end of the year.

The Perfect Father’s Day Gift for Every Father

When you are a kid, finding a suitable gift for Father’s Day can be a struggle. You want to get Dad something he’ll enjoy, but few young people can afford a new set of golf clubs or a shiny new grill, so you end up settling once again for the standard necktie and socks.

And even after you become an adult, that struggle for the perfect Father’s Day gift often continues, albeit in a slightly different way. When it comes to expressing your love and appreciation for everything Dad has done, more “stuff” doesn’t cut it.