Estate Planning

Affluenza [af–floo–en–zuh]

noun

1. Acute shopping frenzy infection casued by in an immediate lump sum of cash provided through an inheritance.  Symptoms may be intensified when the inheritance is received on a birthday and may include the immediate need for a Mercedes S-Class automobile and other luxury items. 

Does your revocable living trust provide for outright gifts of money to your young adult beneficiaries?  Are the outright gifts of money scheduled to occur on your beneficiaries' birthdays (i.e.
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Its Public!

Probate is a public proceeding— meaning anyone can examine your file, make a copy of your Will, and get a list of your family members and their addresses, their ages, and what they are receiving from your estate.

Its Time Consuming!

Probate also takes considerably longer to complete than a typical trust administration. Probate will usually delay distribution of estate assets and take anywhere from 9 to 24 months to complete.

Its Expensive!

The California Probate Code sets the maximum statutory fees that attorneys can charge for a probate. Higher fees can be ordered by a court for more complicated cases.
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As a Forbes article recently explained, the holidays are a perfect time to discuss estate planning issues, because the planning is all about helping out one's family. One of the main goals of an estate plan is to ensure that surviving family members will be taken care of and not forced to endure stressful, complicated, and costly procedures to get financial affairs in order following a death.

One way to broach the topic over the holidays, is to frame the talk in the context of high-profile celebrity stories. Of course all marriages (short and long) have significant effects on one's estate planning documents, and an estate planning attorney should be consulted when a marriage is entered into or ended. It is smart to make appropriate changes even before a divorce is finalized; otherwise the estranged spouse may still retain control if a death occurs before the separation is official.
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