The most common will is one involving a married couple that says all to the surviving spouse and then equally to our children. Those wills have severe flaws. The first is that the surviving spouse, upon receiving the assets, has the full right to re-gift them how they wish. You might not imagine that your [...]
In prior articles, we have considered that planning in Texas can be done with a last will and testament or a revocable living trust. Which is best for you? A Texas will, when probated, gives an executor authority to transfer all assets in the State of Texas which includes personal property regardless where the financial [...]
What is the difference of doing your planning with a will or a living trust? A will is generally a simpler document to draft and therefore you save some up-front costs in creating the document. However, since probate is required of a will, you have costs that are going to be incurred when [...]
What's the difference between doing planning with a will versus a revocable trust? Most people understand the concept of a will. It is someone's written legal instructions as to how their assets are being divided and who is going to be in charge - their executor. A revocable living trust is something that many [...]
A second fundamental reason why we plan is to deal with incapacity or disability as opposed to death. Although I can guarantee you all of you will die, I can assure you that most of you will have someone in your family affected by incapacity. Incapacity means the legal inability to make decisions for yourself [...]
Many think the purpose of drafting a will is to avoid probate. When most people hear the word probate, they think "dispute". Probate doesn't mean disputed; it means the legal process of having the court recognize a person's will as their "last will" and that it's legally valid. And then, also appointing the person named in the will [...]
Just what do we mean when we say you need to do your estate planning? To some that means making sure that they have decreased taxes, decreased legal expenses, or attempted to avoid conflict. Those are all part of the process and things to consider, so estate planning means different things to different [...]
Pyke & Associates is a firm of elder law attorneys. But what does that mean? Unfortunately, the term elder law means different things to different people, so let me explain what we mean by that term at Pyke & Associates. Boiling this down to its simplest, Pyke & Associates does planning to transition [...]
We live in a scan and email world where documents are executed electronically. Even million-dollar real estate deals are electronically signed, which is perfectly legal. It is common to store business records on computers. Is that good enough? I'm not a tech guy, but please BACK UP! Other than that pithy advice, you should have [...]
Gifting someone a specific property in your will is known as a specific bequest, and the wording of these can be a problem. We see some horrible will provisions, even in attorney-drafted wills, that do not fulfill the decedent’s specific bequest. The problem occurs because a specific gift in a will, of a specific property, [...]