In June 2013, The Sopranos star, James Gandolfini, died from a sudden heart attack while vacationing in Italy. Gandolfini was survived by his wife, infant daughter, son from a previous marriage, and two sisters. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at an estimated $70 million. Although Gandolfini had a large estate, he did not develop an effective estate plan to safeguard his assets. Although it is very unfortunate to see someone pass away at such a young age (Gandolfini was 51), his death can be used as a lesson for everyone of the importance of having an estate plan that protects their assets for their loved ones.
Author: heschlawadmin
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Frequent Flyer Obstacles | Hesch Law
Overcoming Obstacles
Frequent flyer miles can be very beneficial if you love to vacation or need to regularly travel for work. If you have spent countless dollars building up your frequent flyer miles, you would probably want unused miles to become a part of your estate in the event of your death. However, there are many obstacles that need to be considered before your heirs and beneficiaries can take your miles outright.
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Proper Estate Planning
Top 10 Mistakes that may devastate your family and their financial security without proper estate planning
1. Failure to make sure you have enough life/disability insurance to provide for your family.
2. Failure to execute a Health Care Power of Attorney, a Living Will, and a Financial Power of Attorney, resulting in your family needing to go through probate court to be appointed your guardian in order to avoid what Terry Schiavo had to do for 10 years – being kept alive on life support with a feeding tube.
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Virtual Assets
Estate planning typically involves implementing a strategy of how you will dispose of your physical assets upon your death. Physical assets can include a home, jewelry, furniture, and automobiles.
However, in today’s high-tech world, some of your assets probably cannot be physically accounted for. These assets can exist online, such as if you have an internet business, a blog that generates income from ads, frequent flyer miles, or a cloud depository for precious family photos. Such assets may continue to accrue untouched income for years or disappear altogether, simply because your heirs and beneficiaries don’t know they exist or don’t know where to access them.
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Document Assistant Danger
The Dangers of Document Assistants
The use of online estate planning documents (i.e. LegalZoom.com) have become widely popular over the last decade. These documents are designed to make estate planning cheaper, faster, and easier. However, if you rely on online documents to plan your estate, you are faced with severe risks that could ultimately make your estate more expensive, more time consuming, and much more difficult for your family. Your family could end up paying more in estate taxes than it would have cost to hire an attorney in the first place, or certain intended beneficiaries of your estate might not take anything.
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Health Care POA
A health care power of attorney is a document that gives specific privileges to an agent for the purpose of making health care decisions for you in the event you become incapacitated or unconscious and are unable to make your own health care decisions. Who you appoint to be that agent, however, can be a difficult choice. Your agent should ideally be someone who knows you well, has an ability to make sound judgments, and knows what decisions you would want to be made in certain situations.
But which agents should you avoid? And what about alternate agents?
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Marital Benefits Future-Same Sex Marriage
If you are in a same-sex marriage, you may have disregarded any Social Security or other federal benefits from your estate plan. That’s because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) made sure that neither spouse in a same-sex marriage got a penny of the other’s federal benefits if the other died first, regardless that you and your loved one contributed the same amount to the programs as every other taxpayer.
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Divorce and Estate Plans | Hesch Law
Don’t forget to make the necessary revisions to your estate plan
Getting a divorce can be a complicated and emotionally draining process, involving many changes to your life and to the plans you’ve made for the future. Your Last Will and Testament and other estate planning documents may not be on your mind during this difficult time, but you cannot afford to neglect them. As you get through the divorce process, it’s important that you make the appropriate modifications to your will, trust, and other estate planning documents.
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Financial Power of Attorney (POA)
A Power of Attorney (POA) is a useful and necessary document for handling financial matters for someone else. When circumstances dictate that you are physically or mentally unable or incapable of handling your own financial and legal affairs, it’s a good idea to have a Power of Attorney in place. A POA appoints someone you trust to act as your attorney-in-fact, sometimes referred to as your ‘agent,’ in your stead.
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Living Will
If you’ve been admitted to a hospital or seen your doctor recently, chances are you were asked if you have a living will. Living wills can also be called Advance Directives or Medical Directives, depending on what state you are in. A living will is a document that details your desire to have life-sustaining treatment withheld if you are ill and there is no hope for recovery. If you want doctors to do everything they can to keep you alive, there is no need for any action on your part, as this is standard medical practice.