Remove your Spouse as your Named Agent

It is important that you change your Advanced Directives (Powers of Attorney and Health Care Power of Attorney) DURING your divorce and not wait until it is finalized.

Why? If you are in an accident during your divorce and unable to handle your financial affairs and/or make your own medical decisions,  and your current documents name your spouse as your agent, it is your soon-to-be ex who will be making  your health care and financial decisions.  This ultimately means he or she  will be in control of your money and your medical decisions.

In this article you will find a discussion of why parents should plan for their children through their Last Will and Testaments as well as through the use of Trusts.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124397907698178821.html

Learning about estate planning isn’t like learning to make spaghetti sauce, where the proof of the value of the recipe and ingredients is in the eating of the finished product. And estate plan is intangible. To feel confident that you have an accurate and valuable estate plan you have to have faith in the attorney who created it for you. How do you find an attorney in whom you can place your trust and confidence? Author Deborah L. Jacobs has a few tips to help you find the perfect attorney:

• Ask your friends or other trusted advisors
• Research an attorney’s background before you jump in
• Meet with the attorney and pay attention to the chemistry

Jacobs knows that the decision to spend money on something as intangible as creating or updating an estate plan is a difficult one right now. Those who do feel the cost of estate planning is a worthwhile investment don’t want that investment wasted. Finding the lawyer who will understand your needs, work toward your goals, and give you confidence and peace of mind is essential.

Included in the complete estate plan our firm provides for our clients is a living will (or Advanced Healthcare Directive) nominating a healthcare agent and stating the client’s wishes for end of life decisions and treatment. This document is clear and comprehensive; yet according to Jane Brody’s NY Times article doctors and emergency technicians still have a difficult time withholding life-saving treatments, even if administering them goes expressly against a patient’s clear wishes to the contrary.

What Jane Brody’s article makes clear is that signing a living will is no longer enough. To truly be sure your wishes will be followed you need to include your family and your doctor in your decision-making process, even to the extent that your agent and your doctor sign a statement to the effect that they have reviewed and agree to follow your wishes.

Don’t be one of the growing numbers of people whose wishes for end of life treatment are ignored. Bring your living will or healthcare directive to your next doctor’s appointment to review with your physician. And ask your attorney about POLST, MOLST, or other state specific forms to bolster your estate planning documents and ensure that your wishes are recognized.

There was a time when women could expect their husbands to take care of them, but it’s time now for women to take charge of their own retirement. Even without the growing divorce rate emphasizing the need for individual rather than “family” retirement plans; the falling economy, rising health care prices, and growing need for long term care insurance make it all the more necessary for women to take responsibility for their own retirement funds.

Finances can be a daunting topic for women, and there are always excuses to put off planning for another day, says Dianne Webster in her article “What Women Need to Know About Retirement”, but women can’t afford to put it off any longer. Webster helps women take the bull by the horns by providing some good common-sense steps to help them get started with their retirement planning today.

Being in charge of your financial future is more important now than ever before. Women, don’t take chances with your golden years, start planning for your future now.

Lincoln, for all that he did which inspires us today, was not a cheerful sort of fellow. In fact, if he were alive today, he would undoubtedly be diagnosed with clinical depression and treated accordingly. One historian described Lincoln’s sadness after the 1860 Illinois Republican Convention—of which he had unarguably been the star—at a moment that should have been a triumph:

Lincoln’s look at that moment—the classic image of gloom—was familiar to everyone who knew him well. Such spells were just one thread in a curious fabric of behavior and thought that his friends called his “melancholy.” He often wept in public and recited maudlin poetry. He told jokes and stories at odd times—he needed the laughs, he said, for his survival. As a young man he talked more than once of suicide, and as he grew older he said he saw the world as hard and grim, full of misery, made that way by fate and the forces of God. “No element of Mr. Lincoln’s character,” declared his colleague Henry Whitney, “was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy.” His law partner William Herndon said, “His melancholy dripped from him as he walked.”

His talk of suicide and his tendency to dwell on maudlin subjects including premonitions of his own death, makes it all the more remarkable that Lincoln had no will, no estate plan of any kind.

As financial columnist Steve Juetten notes in his article, you should do something President Lincoln didn’t.

The thought of making such a big purchase can be a frightening one when everyone else you know is hiding money under the mattress. But if done the right way, and with the right guidance, it can end up being the best move you’ll ever make for your retirement. Dan Kadlec of CNNmoney.com shares four steps to taking the leap and landing the best deal in his article Home Sweet Retirement Home.

Kadlec’s advice is just what the doctor ordered, especially his suggestion that you “drive a hard bargain.” As a culture of retail stores, where everything comes with a price tag, many of us have forgotten the fine art of bargaining. But Kadlec reminds us that this is a buyer’s market, and there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of haggling—especially if you’re the one with the upper hand. He also advises that you know what you can afford. Don’t let the spirit of bargaining carry you away. Know your limits and stick them!

But perhaps Kadlec’s best advice is to “pick your sweet spot”. This is the place where you will be spending your golden years, where your grandchildren will come to visit, and where you’ll spend those lazy days of retirement sitting on the porch and watching the sun set. Don’t just pick any place because it’s a deal; pick the place you’ll be happy to wake up in every morning.

But not all small businesses are created equal, and we aren’t the only ones who think so. A new study by the Wall Street Journal itself found that “entrepreneurs who engage in business planning early on are more likely to… get a business off the ground.” The article focuses mainly on a business plan, which is indeed one of the most important start-up documents you can have, but advance business planning can include these other documents as well, many of which require experienced legal advice:

• Operating agreement
• Legal partnership agreement
• Articles of Incorporation
• Bylaws
• Operations Manual

If current economic circumstances have you thinking about starting your own business, come into our office and let us help with the advance planning. We care about our clients, and are invested in seeing you accomplish your goals. We want to help give you and your business the best possible chance for success.

As Lieber points out, because of the current financial crisis we are now constantly barraged with opinions about where things went wrong and financial advice telling us how to keep our own bank accounts safe. In the midst of all this sometimes confusing and conflicting advice, Lieber has turned to the food specialists for financial guidance… with surprisingly simple results!

It turns out that the 4 golden rules of healthy eating translate pretty well to healthy spending as well:

1. Remove Temptation: just as dieters keep sweets out of the house and out of reach, so should financial dieters remove temptation from their everyday lives. Lieber suggests taking yourself off the e-mail notification lists for your favorite stores, or canceling your account with Amazon.com. We would also suggest staying away from the mall.
2. Portion Control: The first step of dieting is to cut down the size of your portions; the same can be done with your budget. If you are a clothes horse and spend much of your money buying clothing, give yourself a budget. Then take that budgeted clothes money out of your bank account and put it in an envelope. When the envelope is empty the buying stops until the next pay period. This can be done with just about any budgeted item, including books, music, eating out, etc.
3. Count Calories: Just as counting calories makes you aware of exactly how much unnecessary eating you do, religiously keeping track of every purchase will bring a surprising awareness of your excess spending. Once you’re aware, putting a stop to it will be much easier.
4. Create Good Habits: They say that it takes 28 days to form a habit. If you can keep a healthy diet for 28 days it will become second nature and lead to healthier habits for a lifetime. Make a resolution to stick to your financial diet for 28 days. Having a cut-off date will make it easier to get through the rough patches in the beginning. After the deadline has passed, reassess and see how difficult it really was.

Our guess is that it will be surprisingly easy to maintain your healthy new habits!

The greatest fallacy most people have about estate planning is the belief that if they die intestate (or without a will) all of their property will go to their spouse.  In fact, it is this belief that keeps many people from creating an estate plan until after one spouse dies.  But this is not necessarily true.  What happens to your estate depends on many factors, including the state in which you live, whether you have children, your marital status and whether you’ve been married before, etc.  There is absolutely no one answer to the question “What happens if I die without a will?” Are you sure you want to take your chances with what might happen?

Another issue that most people just don’t understand is that probate is more often than not a very time consuming and expensive process.  There is a good likelihood that your loved ones will need access to your estate in the months following your death—unfortunately they are not likely to get it!  Probate court calendars, informing creditors, looking for other possible heirs, other family members contesting decisions—all of these and more can keep your estate tied up in probate for months or years, and unavailable to the people who need it most.

And perhaps the least understood drawback to refusing to create an estate plan in a down economy is that the probate courts may force your heirs to sell valuable assets at a time when property values are at their lowest. This alone could result in significant losses to the estate you pass on to your beneficiaries, not to mention probate fees and estate taxes that could have been saved had you planned ahead.

Estate planning may feel like an unnecessary expense, but the more you understand the more you realize just how essential it is.  Creating your estate plan now could be the best investment you make in your family’s future.