Statistics show there are an increasing number of older individuals who are divorcing later on in life. There is also an increasing number of individuals who are discovering that living together as an unmarried couple has its advantages. According to the United States Census Bureau, the number of unmarried…
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New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog
The Elements of a Successful Inheritance Trust
Creating a successful inheritance trust is not easy. In some situations even when a family believes that they have created a well-written inheritance trust, they have failed to address a number of complexities including those involving incompetency. This article reviews some of the elements that should be included in an…
How to Neutralize Challenges to Your Will
There are a range of situations that could prompt a parent to disinherit a child. For example, some children completely ignore their parents. An extreme example is when an adult child tries to commit his parent to a mental institution. A more common example are situations where an adult child…
Estate Planning and Cryptocurrency
The introduction of cryptocurrency has created a number of new issues, which includes how these digital assets should be addressed in a person’s estate plan. Because the Internal Revenue Service has classified cryptocurrency as property capable of being taxes, it is possible to dictate how ownership of cryptocurrency should be…
4 Pieces of Advice on Selecting an Executor
After the devastation of accepting the loss of a loved one subsides, it can be challenging to determine how to best process. Unless you have navigated this process before, performing the various tasks asked of an executor can seem overwhelming. As a result, this article reviews some pieces of…
What Are Marital Trusts?: Lessons learned from Comptroller v. Taylor
An appellate court recently reversed in part and affirmed in part the judgment of the Court of Appeals concerning a decision by the Comptroller of the Treasury to include the value of a marital trust in an estate in a tax assessment. The trust contained qualified terminable interest property that…
Lessons Learned from In re Peter Val Preda Trusts
The Vermont Supreme Court recently heard the case of In re Peter Val Preda Trusts, which introduced some important estate planning issues that all individuals interested in creating trusts should understand. Both the individual who created the trust as well as his wife were deceased. In June 2018, the…
How to Deal with Out-of-State Assets in an Estate Plan
It is not uncommon in our region for people to own real property outside of New York State. Increasingly, people own other home or investment properties out of state and even out of the country. A will generally disposes of all of an individual’s assets. The rules are different however…
Issues to Consider before Creating a Living Will
Creating a living will is one of the areas of the estate planning that many people overlook. These documents, which are also sometimes referred to as advance health care directives, describe what types of life-prolonging measure an individual would like if they are placed on life support. Among other…
Estate Planning and Alzheimer’s
Following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, you and your loved one will end up facing a number of serious challenges. For one, there are a number of difficult emotions including fear and uncertainty about what the future holds. Second, there are a number of complex issues involving estate planning. …