You did the right thing for your family. You sat down and drew up a will. Maybe you saw the WillMaker program on sale at Costco, or maybe you said, "I drew up my will 30 years ago and like it the way it is, and I don’t need to pay no stinkin' lawyer to [...]
I am often asked by probate clients and estate planning clients why two individuals have to watch the signing of a will. I have had clients ask me if a notary acknowledgement alone is sufficient. The answer is that wills executed in California must follow strict guidelines. A notarization alone will not make a will [...]
I think some people believe that if someone can’t sign their name or read due to a physical disability, they can’t create an estate plan. That is simply not the case. The law allows a person to execute documents by making a mark. The legal capacity to sign with a mark instead of a signature [...]
I never would have thought I would be talking about this problem, but I have come across it recently. Some mortuaries and funeral homes are holding a loved one’s remains—not for safekeeping because no one claimed the remains, but because the family isn’t able to pay the balance due on the mortuary bill. For many [...]
I was just reading a legal question-and-answer site about a family who could not find their estate planning documents. They wanted to know what to do. Apparently, the family had done their estate planning quite a while ago, and the relative in question had just passed away. Now the family is furiously tearing up the [...]
On a legal website, I recently read a question asked by a child who wanted to know what is going to happen to her mother’s estate when she died. The child mentioned that the county, through a public guardian, had a conservatorship over the mother. The child also stated that the county had created a [...]
You may be wondering, Do I need to put my cars in my living trust? Here’s the short answer: if you are talking about the cars you use every day to go to and from work, you probably do not need to bother going down to the DMV and changing your ownership records. After all, [...]
One of the key tenements of estate planning is making your wishes known about who you want to raise your children if something were to happen to you as a parent. No one wants to think about a morbid situation like this. But your decision can be the key difference between choosing who you want [...]
I just got finished reading another online post about a living trust plan going wrong. The decedent had used Legal Zoom to create his legal trust plan. According to the post, the decedent had sent form letters provided by Legal Zoom to his banks and financial institutions to change the title of his assets to [...]
I was just reading a question on a legal question-and-answer website about contesting a living trust. The inheritance for the beneficiary of the trust had been significantly reduced, and the questioner wanted to know who pays for attorney’s fees and costs in an unsuccessful contest. I felt I should write about this because there can [...]
