How Can Domestic Life Partners Use Estate Planning to Provide for One Another?
Video Summary
How can domestic life partners use estate planning to provide for one another? Well, it’s imperative if you do wish to provide for your life partner that you do estate planning and that you can provide for your life partner in your will. You can designate him or her as a beneficiary under your life insurance policies. You can set up joint accounts naming your life partner as the beneficiary. One of the problems that you may have is when it comes to 401ks and your profit sharing plans. Sometimes that’s more difficult. Florida does not recognize civil unions. Even if you have a civil union recognized in another state, it won’t be recognized here in Florida.
So the key to providing for your life partner after you pass on is to do the planning and do a will and set your accounts up in your joint names. And sometimes it’s – I’ve seen any number of times – it’s tragic when a life partner has cared for the other one for many, many years and they didn’t make any provision for them. And then whenever they pass away the life partner gets nothing. So I urge you to go ahead and have a will prepared and provide for your life partner and do the planning. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288. Thank you.
- Published in Estate Planning, Videos
If a Couple Divorces, What are the Right of the Ex-Spouse in the Former Spouse’s Estate?
Video Summary
If a couple divorces, what are the rights of the ex-spouse in their former spouse’s estate? The law provides that if you do not change your will and you have left the name of your former spouse in your will that they don’t receive or take anything under your will. That’s the same as far as a trust is concerned. However, if you name them on your IRA and have not changed it, or your individual retirement account, thus far the law has not been changed and so they may take under your IRA-designated beneficiary form.
So it’s important that you review all your estate documents after you become divorced. If you didn’t have a will and didn’t name your ex-spouse on any of your IRAs or name them in your will, then of course they would not have any rights under your will to receive anything. And whenever you have children involved, of course, they may have rights as far as the children are concerned as the natural guardian of those as far as child support or to take care of the children’s interests in your estate. I urge you, though, if you do get divorced, that you do need to change your will and eliminate or provide for someone other than your ex-spouse. So if you have any questions about that or would like to have a will drawn or review your estate plan, call me at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Videos
Do I Need A Health Care Surrogate For My Adult Son Or Daughter?
Video Summary
Does a parent need a healthcare surrogate for an adult child? The answer is yes, if that’s who the adult child wishes to make healthcare decisions for them. A healthcare surrogate is a designation of someone to make healthcare decisions for you in the event that you’re unable to do so. Usually a healthcare surrogate also has what they call a HIPAA waiver which authorizes a medical provider to release medical information to the person you designate in your healthcare surrogate.
So the adult child can name a parent or they can name anyone else they want to name as well as any adult concerned. So just because you’re the parent does not give you the right to make healthcare decisions for your adult child. And the HIPAA waiver’s important in the event that you wish to obtain the medical information or how the person is doing medically. And without it, the healthcare providers are supposed to refuse to give you that information unless there is a designation or a waiver under HIPAA. So I urge you to have a healthcare surrogate executed and designate who you’d like to make healthcare decisions for you in the event you’re unable to make healthcare decisions and provide them with a HIPAA waiver.
Usually these healthcare surrogates go from the parent to the child rather than the child to the parent but there’s certainly no prohibition or automatic right of a parent to get information on an adult child. So if you’d like to have a healthcare surrogate prepared call me at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Videos
What Steps Should I Take If I Want To Buy A Business?
Video Summary
What steps should I take if I am considering buying a business? Be very careful. (a) whenever you buy a business or are considering buying a business, first thing that I ask the people is whether they’ve had any experience in a particular business so that they know what they’re looking for and that every business is unique.
I know particularly the restaurant business or the delicatessen business, the bar business, there’s all sorts of things that unless you’ve been there you don’t have any ideas of what the problems could be as far as a business is concerned and that’s true about any business. So if you don’t have any experience and a going concern be very, very careful.
You need to hopefully work in the business for a period of time so that you can get the expertise and know any problems that are associated with it. So that is huge as far as (a) having the expertise as far as running the business once you purchase it. Also, you need to be sure you review the books and records of the business and do a due diligence as far as that’s concerned.
You need to be very concerned about key employees, making sure that they don’t leave and there goes your book of business as far – whatever business it is and they go out on their own if there are key employees.
So you need to, whenever you locate a business you need to then prepare a contract which will give you the opportunity to exercise due diligence and if you would like to come in and speak to me about what all you need to do to buy business I’ll be happy to discuss it with you and work on preparing the contract but a lot of it has to do with your area of expertise and your ability to know what to look for in any particular business. If you have any questions give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in LLC's and Corporations, Videos
How Long Does Probate Take?
Video Summary
How long does probate take? Well it doesn’t take six years and the lawyers don’t wind up taking 80 percent of the money and the government taking the other 20 percent, so the beneficiaries get nothing.
The usual time period or, in fact, the judges require probate administrations be closed out in a one-year period or the lawyer who is handling the estate needs to give an explanation to the court as to why the estate is still open after one year.
There is a short form of probate called a summary administration that can be used and a probate administration can be concluded in approximately 30 to 45 days or even sooner than that. That’s if you have assets of less than $75,000 which would exclude the homestead property and that there’s no creditors. Then you can file for a summary administration and have the assets passed to the heirs.
If you have creditors or other problems, different assets, multiple beneficiaries and have to open up a formal administration with assets in excess of $75,000 or any number of creditors that’s called a formal administration and in a formal administration you have to run a notice of creditors, and that creditors period runs for three months from the date the first publication in the newspaper is published, and so the estates usually will be open from four to six months.
Now a lot depends on the beneficiaries. If the beneficiaries want to fuss about this and start being hard to get along with or they don’t agree, i.e. a non-functional family and want to fight about it, well, all bets are off as far as how long it’s gonna take to resolve the estate.
One of the other things that’ll keep an estate open is this real estate market and trying to liquidate real estate, and that’s another problem, or dealing with various assets, or even recovering all the assets also takes some time.
So there’s any number of factors that go into the time period in order to probate an administration, probate an estate, so but the rule of thumb is if you have a formal administration you’re probably looking four to six months. If it’s a relatively simple estate it should be closed out in a year.
If the parties want to fuss and sputter about it well then you’re looking at spending a lot of money and the lawyers will take all the money while the parties want to fight over furniture and pots and pans or – and so it’s not good when we fight. So if you have a functional family it should be wrapped up and board at 12 months. If you have a question about probate please give me a call at (727) 847-2288, thank you.