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Back to Basics: Estate Planning 101, Part II

Published on: March 6, 2020 | by Ettinger Law Firm

A trust is an important estate plan document. Other estate planning documents include a last will and testament and intestate succession.

Every state has laws that determine who your heirs are and what proportion of the estate the heir is entitled to receive. Heir refers to blood relatives and are usually grouped according to closeness of relationship: Children and spouse; siblings and parents; aunts, uncles, and cousins. Where there is no will or trust, the estate is deemed “intestate” and must be settled according to state probate law. Individuals who inherit property under a will or trust are referred to as beneficiaries. Persons can be named as beneficiaries on bank accounts, life insurance policies, financial portfolios, retirement accounts, and certain types of titled property such as real estate – they need not be heirs. Remember heirs can be beneficiaries, but beneficiaries are not always heirs.

To complete an estate plan, you should consider adding trust documents.

Back to Basics: Estate Planning 101, Part I

Published on: March 2, 2020 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Creating a thoughtful estate plan is one of the greatest gifts anyone can leave their loved ones. It is important to update your will when major changes occur. These might include marriage, divorce, opening or closing a business, buying or selling real estate, or birth or death of an heir.

Estate planning is a process that helps ensure that your desires for distribution of your property and assets at death are carried out. During life, to complete an estate plan, you should consider the following:

Will: A will is the primary document that should be prepared while living, to be effective at death. A will is a written document expressing how you would like your estate to be distributed after death. Usually a will must be executed in the presence of two disinterested witness and be notarized. You must also have testamentary capacity (over the age of 18, of sound mind, and competent).

Can Debt Collectors and Creditors Garnish My Retirement Benefits?

Published on: November 17, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

More seniors than ever are carrying high debt into retirement. Managing high debt simultaneously with managing the cost of daily living and medical care on a fixed income is a recurring problem in many households. The amount of debt burden has skyrocketed over the past decade.

The National Council on Aging commissioned the Survey of Consumer Finances to study debt and how it impacts seniors economic security. The key findings are listed below:

Percentage of households headed by an adult 65 or older with any debt increased from 41.5% in 1992 to 51.9% in 2010 and then to 60% in 2016.

What to Do When a Loved One Passes (The Survivor’s Guide)

Published on: November 12, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Settling an estate, after the loss of a loved one while grieving, is a difficult process. For the weeks and months that follow the funeral, handling the estate of a deceased individual may quickly overwhelm survivors. The steps outlined below provide a guide to survivors through this tumultuous time.

Immediately upon the death of a loved one

After notifying family members and close friends, contact a funeral director. The funeral director is able to assist with funeral and burial arrangements, publish an obituary, order the death certificate, and transport your loved one’s remains to the funeral home.

Mistakes to Avoid When Establishing Trusts, Part 2

Published on: November 1, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

This is the last post in our in-depth series of trusts and why and how to include them in your estate plan. For prior topics, click here. We were last discussing common mistakes we see in the establishment of trust instruments. Our last post examined failing to fund the trust. The next topics surround beneficiary designations and policy titling.

No. 3 – Unintended beneficiaries of retirement accounts and life insurance policies

Trust funds include life insurance proceeds and other accounts and policies payable to beneficiaries. If those accounts and policies do not properly designate your trust as a primary or contingent beneficiary, then those funds will pass to the beneficiary directly, disregarding any of your instructions from the trust document. The result of the distribution may be that your beneficiary receives more or less than you attended or sooner than necessary, defeating the purpose of the establishment of the trust.

Mistakes to Avoid When Establishing Trusts, Part 1

Published on: October 28, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

We’ve been examining adding a revocable (a/k/a living or inter vivos) trust or irrevocable trust to your estate plan. Trust instruments are an important part of your estate plan, particularly if you have a spouse and young children you wish to provide for upon your death. When mistakes are made, in establishing or setting-up a trust, the errors are borne by your survivors.

When problems arise in trusts they tend to involve issues with trust funding, policy titling, and beneficiary designations. When neglected these issues have their way of creeping into the lives of your loved one and will require significant amounts of money and time being spent that could have otherwise been avoided. What follows is a primer on the top 4 scenarios your survivors will need to get through to correct any problems associated with trust funding, policy titling, and beneficiary designation.

No. 1 – Avoiding probate

How to Deal with Out-of-State Assets in an Estate Plan

Published on: October 12, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

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 if the asset is real property. There are three rules to keep in mind and carefully consider when dealing with assets outside of New York as part of your estate planning process.

Consider the following rules when drafting or revising your will:

If the out of state asset is real property it is vital to develop your estate plan in conjunction with the law in that locality. Real estate assets are governed by the laws of the country or state in which they are situated. This means that the law of the other locality will determine if the New York will is recognized as valid there with respect to the real property.

Safeguarding Estate Planning Documents

Published on: October 8, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Clients call this law firm asking for a copy of their will or other estate planning documents because they cannot locate the original all of the time. Our first response is to tell them that if they cannot find the original document, then they do not really have a will. In New York, only a document bearing the original signature of the testator and witnesses can be submitted to probate. While a photocopy or electronic copy of the document may exist, it is not the original and will be rejected by the Surrogate’s Court when seeking to have an estate probated. It is not until the loved person becomes admitted at the hospital under an emergency or that person passes that those left behind start the search for estate planning documents. Another overlooked catastrophic event is damage or loss of estate planning documents after a natural disaster.

Domestic weather events, including nor’easters, tropical storms, and hurricanes often bring a great deal of water to the shorelines and shore communities of New York State. Emergency plans should include provisions for the preservation of estate planning documents. When people are asked or ordered to evacuate their homes, because of emergency weather conditions, they often only leave with the clothes on their backs and their loved ones. Not all temporary shelters for example, allow people to bring their pets with them and many times the pets stay behind. The last thing on peoples’ mind, when evacuating their homes, is collecting and preserving estate planning documents.

What are estate planning documents?

Opioid Crisis at Home: Rise in Elder Abuse Tied to Opioid Epidemic

Published on: September 17, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

This is the second post in a two-part series on the opioid crisis at home. Addiction, the subject of our first post, is not the only opioid-related impact on older adults. The following post will examine the rise in elder abuse tied to the opioid epidemic.

I assisted a client with the purchase of commercial real estate property and had the opportunity to talk to the sellers at the property closing. I was surprised to learn that the building had been a family restaurant, in business for nearly eighty years. I asked the sellers why they were selling their business. They told me that they could no longer keep running it. They continued to share that they have two adult children battling opioid addiction.

The dad confided further that their children used to break into their restaurant and steal steaks and seafood to fund their drug habit. They were tired of hiding their valuables around their children and were having a difficult time anticipating what they would raid next. When the kids started breaking into the business, they knew they could not keep it going. In addition, they have grandchildren that they are raising as the primary caregivers because their children and their partners were not able to care for the young ones.

Preventing Deed Fraud and Mortgage Scams

Published on: September 8, 2019 | by Ettinger Law Firm

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a group of bills intended to increase consumer homeowner protections. By press release, the Governor’s office announced three important improvements in an effort to strengthen homeowner safeguards and close loopholes to prevent deed fraud and mortgage scams.

Unbeknownst to the homeowner, deed fraud occurs when someone steals your identity, forges your name on a deed, and takes title to your home. The homeowner only becomes aware of the fraud when a third-party tries to collect on a mortgage or debt. Seniors are often targeted as unknowing participants in mortgage scams, especially surrounding reverse mortgage products. The purpose of the scam is to steal the equity from your home. Beware of any offer for a free home, investment opportunity or foreclosure or refinance assistance. No reputable company will be calling you cold or knocking on your door with offers that sound too good to be true.

The new laws passed in New York to protect homeowners are as follows: