Do I Need a Lawyer to Settle a Boundary Dispute With My Neighbor?
Video Summary
Do I need a lawyer to settle a boundary line dispute with my neighbor? The answer is absolutely you need to have a lawyer. First thing is you need to have a survey to establish where the boundary line is and also where there’s any fences that are encroaching on your property or on your neighbor’s property or any other structures. Secondly, hopefully your neighbor has a survey too and see if the surveys match. If you and your neighbor are reach an agreement as far as the boundary line, you’ll need to have that memorialized and put in the public record so it won’t come up in the future and have a lawyer prepare that agreement. As far as the boundary line’s concerned, if this is a boundary line dispute as far as where the fences have been for a number of years or whatever, there’s any number of legal theories by which you can try and proceed under, but it is a very, very complex area of the law and you absolutely need to have an attorney to represent you as far as a boundary line dispute. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
Why Would a Trust Be a Bad Idea?
Video Summary
Why would a Trust be a bad idea? Well, the first question I ask clients when they come to see me, they want to set up a Trust, is said, why do you want to set up a trust? The usual answer I get is because I want to avoid probate. Well, there’s alternatives to that, particularly if you want all your assets to be distributed at the time of your death to the beneficiaries. If that is the estate plan and the purpose of the Trust, that can be accomplished by how you title your assets. Just like your bank accounts, you can set those up so that they’re payable on death to the beneficiaries. Doesn’t have to go through probate. If you have your home, you can execute an enhanced life estate deed called a Lady Bird Deed works the same as a payable on death bank account. You have all the rights of ownership during your lifetime, but upon your death, it’ll go automatically. Go to the beneficiaries with a death certificate and avoid probate. If you have a brokerage account with say, Merrill Lynch or Raymond James or any brokerage account, you can then set that up so that there’s beneficiaries. That’s called a TOD designation, so those would automatically avoid probate and go to the beneficiaries. Also, your life insurance, annuities, IRAs, all of those have beneficiaries or should have beneficiaries, and so none of those go through probate. So if you don’t have a good reason to set up a Trust, that would be a reason why it would be bad to set one up because you’re basically just spending money that you don’t need to. In the past, Trust had been set up to avoid estate taxes, but estate taxes have been now elevated to you have to have assets over $13 million before there’s any estate taxes. So that would be the circumstance whenever I would not recommend, or I basically don’t draftTtrust if the person wishes their assets to be distributed at the time of their death and designated. Now, there are good reasons set up Trust, such as if you have minors and you want to delay the distribution of their money, or if you have a beneficiary that has a drug dependency or is a special needs trust. Any number of other good reasons set up trust. But if you just wish to do it, to avoid probate and you want an outright distribution, I think that’s a bad idea and save your money as far as the cost of setting one up. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
What is Advanced Care Planning?
Video Summary
What is advanced healthcare planning? That is whenever someone is concerned about their particularly going into a nursing home and how are they going to have it paid for. So when do your planning, one of the tools that you could use is to check to see what the cost is as far as nursing, home insurance. And the cost of nursing homes is like $8,000 to $10,000 a month. And so you would need to see about planning ahead. So if you needed to go in a nursing home, how it would be paid if you don’t have that money and basically wouldn’t be able to afford it. The other thing is, is to plan to have what they call Medicaid pay for your healthcare planning. And there you would need to talk to an elder law lawyer who then could assist you as far as setting your estate up so that, and plan for that on how to title your assets under the Medicaid guidelines. And so that way that if you would have to go into skilled nursing care, you could preserve some of your assets for whoever you leave behind, particularly your homestead. So the healthcare planning also includes, well, who do you want to leave in charge of doing this? I usually prepare in conjunction with estate plans as far as healthcare planning, is to prepare a living will, which designates someone to be able to disconnect life support, also prepare what they call a healthcare surrogate for someone to be able to make healthcare decisions in the future. Also a durable power of attorney and hopefully that would avoid having to go through a guardianship. And you can also designate what they call a standby guardian to designate who you’d want to be your guardian in the event that you would become incapacitated and need a guardian appointed. If you have any questions concerning this, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Videos
I Place My Assets In a Trust Are They Protected From My Creditors?
Video Summary
If I place my assets in a trust, are they protected from my creditors? No. If you transfer your assets into what they call a revocable trust, which is usually set up as far as your estate plans concern, saying who you want to receive your assets upon your death, your assets are not protected, and in fact your assets are not protected. If you transfer your assets to any sort of trust or maintain control over it, the creditors can still attach these assets. This is particularly troublesome if you set up a joint trust between husband and wife, and that you do have some asset protection as husband and wife under ancy by the entirety. Since creditors get a judgment against just either spouse, they can’t attach assets that are titled as husband and wife. Whereas if you set up a joint trust or have a joint trust, you transfer your tendency by the entirety property into the trust. Well, it destroys that, and the creditors then may be able to reach the half of the assets that you placed in this trust. Some folks say, well, what about an irrevocable trust? An irrevocable trust? It means that you transfer your assets to a trustee and you have no longer have any control over these assets, and the trustee has to follow the directions, follow the directions that they’re provided in the trust, but you can’t make demand upon them. If they are put in this irrevocable trust, then they are protected from creditors. So if you have any questions about this, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.