Author Archives: Matthew Luedke
Check in on Elderly Loved Ones During Holidays
With the Holiday season now underway and many families getting together, you might consider this as a unique opportunity to check on your elderly loved ones wellbeing. While we’d all prefer to use these meetings to devote this valuable social time to connecting and catching up with relatives, you might consider using a small… Read More »
Succession Planning Tips for Family Owned Businesses
Any family that intends to pass on its business to the subsequent generation is going to need a well-designed business succession plan. At some point, everyone develops a natural desire to retire. Deciding what happens to your company can be as critical as guaranteeing that you have enough money to retire on. Who’s going… Read More »
The Pitfalls of Relying on FREE Online Forms
The online world can be a fantastic source of all kinds of information. However, using free online forms is usually not a great idea. Free online forms that help you establish your Estate Plan might sound enticing due to the cost, but they will usually cost you later down the road. Bad planning will… Read More »
Telling Your Family About Your Estate Plan
The safest method for preventing fights within your family about your estate, is simply to let everyone know what they can expect from your estate plan – ahead of time. Your conversation doesn’t need to be entirely about money either. There are several different issues that will cause families to fight over their deceased… Read More »
Funeral Planning & Medicaid
If you’d like to plan for your own funeral ahead of time so that your family doesn’t have to make your arrangements, one question you should consider is whether or not you may also need to pay in advance. The answer will likely be contingent on your anticipated Medicaid requirements. Overall, it’s usually a… Read More »
Estate Plans: If You’re an Adult – You Need One
Though we characteristically associate the word “estate” with the ultra-rich, “estate planning” itself is not just for the wealthy. Everybody, irrespective of household dynamics or financial status, should benefit by creating an estate plan — which is simply an assortment of documents that detail how you’d like your assets to be distributed. Estate planning… Read More »
What are Special Needs Trusts?
You can consider a trust as “formed” whenever a piece of property (finances, real estate, or other tangible items) becomes managed by another person for someone else’s benefit. An individual handling the property itself is called a “trustee.” The person whose benefit this is for is called a “beneficiary”. A trust generally lasts as… Read More »
Understanding Irrevocable Trusts in Washington State
Revocable vs. Irrevocable Trusts There are many different types of living trusts, but they all fall into two main categories: revocable and irrevocable . Here’s the difference: The terms of a revocable trust can be changed and the trust itself can even be dissolved. This type of trust does allow your heirs to avoid… Read More »
What is a Memorandum of Trust used for?
One of the primary benefits of having a Revocable Living Trust is the privacy offered by this estate planning method. Unlike a Will, which becomes a matter of public record when it’s offered for probate, your Trust Agreement does not become public. So, your business remains your business. What happens, then, when you are… Read More »
Do I Need a Lawyer to Plan an Estate?
So, do you need a lawyer to plan YOUR estate? If you’re thinking about saving a few bucks by creating your own Will & Estate Plan, you might want to think again. Perhaps the most important thing to be asking yourself as you consider planning your own estate documents is whether or not you… Read More »