A few weeks ago, the ABA Center for Law and Aging held a webinar: “Effective Advance Care Planning: Are Your Advance Directives Worth The Paper They Are Written On?” The purpose was to enhance attorneys’ client counseling skills on this topic and their drafting of more effective advance directives. Today I’ll share some state-of-the-art thinking […]

More and more clients believe legal services in general, and estate planning services in particular, are just commodities. They’re being told that it doesn’t matter where they get their bundle of paper. That whether the documents are from the Smith Firm or the Jones Firm or LegalZoom, the outcome will be the same. And you […]

Adoption of children is a relatively common occurrence in the United States. But, in most states, it is also possible to adopt an adult. The adult adoption tool has been used in planning for same-sex couples for decades. Now, it seems that its use may be spreading, in the right circumstances. There are many reasons […]

Tax season is here. For most of your clients and prospects, that means the headache of crunching numbers and rebalancing the budget to pay Uncle Sam. Tax time takes on a different meaning to thieves. Most of the documents needed for taxes are very revealing. They contain client’s name, address, credit account information and most importantly, […]

Attorneys often tell me about how great their employees are and how long they’ve been with their firm. In my experience, this can be both good news and bad news. The Good NewsIt’s always good to have excellent employees. They do good work, they’re a pleasure to be around, and they tend to increase your […]

TRA 2010 included a new provision that allowed for the surviving spouse to use the Deceased Spousal Unused Applicable Exclusion Amount (DSUEA). There are a few reasons why the DSUEA should not be relied upon as a replacement for the credit shelter trust. First, (I will not “bury the lead” reason), TRA 2010 sunsets at […]

The number of beneficiaries receiving Improved Pension increased 25% from 2010 to 2011. Such a substantial increase led the VA to make organizational changes with the goal of allocating more resources and attention to the special issues surrounding the eligibility criteria for Improved Pension. The Pension and Fiduciary Services Department was established April 11, 2011, […]

How do you build lasting relationships with your clients and make sure they don’t see you as just the provider of an ink-on-paper commodity? One way to do this is to keep in regular communication, with routine “touches” throughout the year. At the Academy, we find that it’s ideal to make contact with clients twelve […]

There has been considerable back and forth over the release of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s income tax return. He released his 2010 federal income tax return recently. It’s been widely publicized that the return reports over $21 million of income and that he paid tax at an effective rate of less than 14%. […]

Estate planning, as well as funeral planning, is generally a hard conversation to start. People are reluctant to talk about their mortality. There’s actually a psychological term for this reluctance: the Terror Management Theory. It’s based on the work of Dr. Ernest Becker and his 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Denial of Death. The Terror […]