Here’s an early heads-up about an opportunity to do well by doing good!The next annual National Healthcare Decisions Day is Saturday, April 16, 2011. This initiative is geared to educating the public about the importance of making one’s healthcare wishes known. The ABA and NAELA, along with other national legal organizations, have already joined the 3-year-old […]

For a long time, estate planning lawyers relied on the general senior market for the basis of their business. In truth, though, there are many other viable markets out there. So many, in fact, that it’s impossible to truly do a good job if you try to focus on all of them. It’s important to […]

As we all know, there is no estate or GST tax in 2010. However, the estate and GST taxes return next year. Without Congressional action, the applicable exclusion will be $1 million. Thus, a wealthy individual who dies on December 31, 2010, will face an entirely different tax outcome than one who dies the following […]

You’ve just read the title of this blog and I can hear you say, “Wait a minute, Robert, I’m an estate planning attorney… what ‘group’ do I have that my clients want to be a part of?” Attorneys tend to think of clients as acting independently with no group awareness. They arrive from different sources and […]

If there’s anything that we as attorneys have learned from the recession, it’s that we can’t assume that our clients will always be with us, just because we’ve done a good job for them in the past. Now more than ever, it’s important to remind ourselves that each of us is responsible for maintaining our clients, […]

Few expected that American billionaires could die without federal taxation of their estates. However, that’s the situation we have in 2010. George Steinbrenner and other billionaires have died this year and, under current law, their estates owe no federal estate tax. There have been several pieces of legislation which would reinstate the estate tax. Some […]

At Legacy Safeguard, we routinely take calls from family Members who have lost a loved one and they are trying to write an obituary for them. This can be a very difficult for family Members to write, especially during the immediate aftermath of loss. Many times we hear, “there must be an easier way to […]

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that technical proficiency alone is not enough to make you a success as an attorney. It may come as a surprise to you, though, that technical proficiency plus top-notch business skills aren’t necessarily enough to ensure your success, either. You can be […]

As estate planning attorneys, we know how important trusts are for probate avoidance, tax minimization, and asset management. But, clients often do not give enough consideration to the identity of the trustee who is to follow in their footsteps. Successor trustees are critical to managing the assets during periods of the client’s incapacity and at […]

Death is a very real part of life, along with taxes. Yet, funerals are the only life cycle event most folks don’t want to plan in advance. Despite the fact that humans have a 100 percent mortality rate, we don’t expect to die. If you don’t expect to die, you’re unlikely to preplan a funeral. […]