How to Support a Client’s Adult Child Through a Personal Crisis
Whether it is the onset of a disability or chronic illness later in life or struggles with substance abuse, financial collapse, or bankruptcy, a personal crisis affecting a client’s adult child can affect the entire family.
Parents may feel an urgent need to help but are not always sure...
The Unexpected Death of a Spouse: Immediate Support for Clients
Your clients planned a life together. Nothing could have prepared them for this.
When a client’s spouse unexpectedly passes away, death is no longer theoretical. Decisions that may have been discussed briefly in a planning conversation are now a lived reality, and the situation demands both sensitivity and urgency.
A Windfall and a Target: Navigating Family Expectations After Sudden Wealth
Good news in the form of a sudden windfall can put your family in a new financial position that may materially alter your legacy and estate plan.
And while it may seem like a pure positive, it can also attract the attention of the Internal Revenue Service and prompt...
When an Adult Child Has a Crisis: How an Emergency Can Reshape Your Estate Plan
You never stop being a parent. Even when your child reaches adulthood, they are always in your thoughts - and, in many cases, your estate plan.
There may be times when your adult children need you just as much - or more - than they did while growing up....
Sudden Widowhood: Navigating Legal and Financial Chaos after a Spouse’s Death
You and your spouse planned a life together, and nothing can fully prepare you for their loss. Like most people, you may have let the thought cross your mind only to quickly push it away because it felt too painful to consider. But some level of planning is one of the most...
The Risks of an Unfinished Estate Plan – and Why You Should Complete Yours
Planning for the future, especially your own mortality, is never easy. Even when you understand the importance of creating a will or trust to protect your loved ones, finding the motivation to complete an estate plan can be difficult. Yet an unfinished estate plan is almost as risky as having no plan...
Estate Planning Scams: What Seniors Need to Know
Creating an estate plan is an important step in protecting your loved ones and ensuring that your assets are distributed according to your wishes. Unfortunately, scammers know that people who want to safeguard their estates are often willing to act quickly.
Even a carefully drafted estate plan can be...
The Call That Sounded Like a Scam—But Turned Out to Be an Inheritance
You’ve got to hand it to them: You nearly believed them when they said you were a partial owner of land that you inherited but never knew existed. They had names, dates, even a specific plot, supposedly with mineral rights, that you would never have been able to locate on your own....
When Helping Out Puts the Roof Over Your Head at Risk:Should You Ever Use Your Home as Collateral for Your Child’s Debt?
It is the kind of phone call that keeps parents awake at night. Your daughter is on the line saying, “I need some help.”
She is not hurt. It is not a brush with the law. She is in financial trouble and needs backup.
The business...
Seven Estate Planning Traps Most People Miss – and Seven Questions to Audit Your Family’s Future
Think back to how your life was seven years ago. Your family, your finances, your relationships, and even the accounts you use have probably changed in ways both obvious and subtle. Seven years does not feel like a long time until you start making the list.
Your estate plan...