Asset Protection

If you spent the holidays catching up with friends and family, you saw how many lives changed over the course of the year. Kids grow up, get married and have kids themselves. Life is filled with changes, and estate plans need to reflect those changes. If you die without a will in North Carolina, what…

When both spouses die at the same time, whether as the result of an accident or natural disaster, sticky estate planning questions must be resolved concerning which spouse died first. Here’s one you didn’t see in the movie! When the Titanic sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, there were estate issues created…

Get ready for what may be the biggest changes to the tax code since the Reagan era. For starters, President Trump’s proposed tax changes cut the number of income tax rates from seven brackets to three: 12%, 25%, and 33%. He also wants to increase the standard deduction to $15,000 (from $6,300 for single filers)…

No one expects to become so ill or injured that they cannot go to work, but it happens. To make matters harder, the process of qualifying for disability insurance is very difficult, as is maintaining eligibility for disability benefits. Many people take a very short-sighted approach to long term disability (LTD) insurance, according to NJ.com’s…

We trust that these legal entities will provide us with the protection and facility to perform on our behalf, if and when we can no longer do so. But what’s the right trust for your situation? If you want to be sure that your assets will be properly and privately distributed, according to Yahoo Finance…

It happens all the time: ex-spouses get a nice surprise when no one remembered to update beneficiary designations. Don’t be that person! This is perhaps the single simplest estate planning error. It is also the one that is the easiest to fix: check your beneficiary designations on any assets with a designated beneficiary. Although it is…

Having a will is a great start, but it is not an estate plan. It’s an important distinction! If you’ve got a will, that’s great. But if you’ve got a will that is not part of a larger plan to minimize estate taxes and you don’t have other important documents, like powers of attorney or…

The lack of a will continues to create delays for the family of the late artist. While there has been some progress with the estate, the judge in charge of Prince’s estate matter recently said that he is not yet ready to name heirs. He did indicate that Prince’s siblings would be among the heirs.…