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It is important to make the right decisions with your estate plan, such as whether you should use a will or a trust. One decision is even more important, and it is common.

Perhaps the single greatest divide in estate planning is between those people who use a last will as their primary estate planning tool and those who use a revocable living trust instead. Choosing between using a will or a trust has a great impact on estate plans and often on what can be done with the estate plan.

Last wills must go through probate and be subjected to judicial oversight. This can be very expensive in some states. Trusts avoid probate. However, that...

It is common for elderly people to fall in love and want to get married. As part of the process, they need to make more plans than younger couples.

A common image of the elderly is to see them as past the years to fall in love. Could seniors meet someone new, fall in love and get married? In movies and on TV, elderly people who do fall in love are typically played off for laughs or presented as being under the spell of someone much younger who wants their money.

In real life, it is not unusual for seniors to meet each other, fall in love and get married. Sometimes couples meet in the nursing homes where they live. The only difference...

Now that the estate tax exemption has been doubled, some people are saying there is no longer a need for estate planning. However, estate plans have never been mostly about avoiding the estate tax.

For people who do not want to take the time to plan for their own estates, it might seem like 2018 has started out to be a good year. It has been so good that some people are talking about the death of estate planning itself, because the federal estate and gift tax exemptions have been doubled. They also think that there is no need to have plans to avoid those taxes.

However, most people who planned for their estates before this year were not...

Relatives of a former secretary were surprised to learn that she had quietly built up a fortune over the years and left most of it to charity.

Sylvia Bloom went to work at a small Wall Street law firm as a legal secretary when she was a young woman. She stayed with the firm for 67 years and retired at the age of 96. She passed away in 2016.

Bloom began working at the firm when it was common for secretaries to purchase investments for their employers. Lawyers would tell Bloom what they wanted to invest in. Her job was to make the purchase with the broker. However, Bloom also did something unusual.

She used some of her own money; she also...

When it comes to estate planning, there are several mistakes that people can make in setting up specific legal instruments. However, most mistakes people make are far more basic.

People who are looking to plan their estates, often have a lot of questions about what they should do. However, answering those questions can be like putting the cart before the horse.

Most estate planning mistakes can be avoided, if people would ask what they should not do instead. A large percentage of messy estate administration cases in probate courts would go away, if people would do that.

Market Watch recently discussed some of the things not to do in "7...

When getting an estate plan many Americans are very price conscious. However, the cheapest way to get an estate plan might not be what is needed.

Consumers typically like to pay as little as they can for something. This is a basic notion that companies, such as Amazon and Wal-Mart, have used to become behemoths in the retail industry.

Fundamentally, consumers of legal services are not much different than price-conscious Wal-Mart shoppers. People are sometimes willing to pay more for a higher quality product. However, they are still looking to pay as little as possible.

That can be a problem for people who are looking for estate planning...

Americans can expect to live longer after retiring than previous generations. However, whether they will live better, is an open question that depends on individual choices.

At first glance, Cecilia Chiang might seem like an exception. In some ways she is. The 98-year-old woman who retired in 1991, after a long and successful career in the restaurant industry, continues to be active both in her personal life and professionally consulting for other restaurant owners.

People who can still do that at her age, are now exceptions now. However, they do not have to be that exceptional in the future, as Americans continue to live longer after...

If you are a caregiver for an elderly parent, you might need to assist them in planning for their estate, if they have not already done so.

Many Americans find themselves in precarious financial situations after they retire. At some point, they are no longer able to take care of themselves physically to some degree. They also begin running out of money. Why? Retirement was more expensive than they thought.

This has led to many adult children providing care for their elderly parents. While most are willing to do so, these caregivers often find themselves having to help their parents out with unexpected matters, like estate planning.

This...

Wealthy people are beginning to expect that they will personally live to be at least 100 years old. That has important implications for their planning.

Rich people have most likely always lived longer, on average than the non-wealthy and that is certainly the case today. However, even the wealthy never really live much longer after retirement age.

Nevertheless, medical science has made tremendous strides recently. People can now expect to live much longer, if they can afford the best medical treatment. Today, half of wealthy investors expect that they will live to be 100 years old, as Forbes reports in "Are You Financially Ready To Live...

In the last few decades, women have made tremendous strides in the workplace. However, most married women still leave financial matters to their husbands. That can be a problem in their elder years.

Women today can do almost anything in their professional lives. There are very few boundaries left that women have not been able to cross.

A few decades ago, that was not the case when husbands made the money and the important financial decisions for their families. However, despite the strides women have made professionally, in most families, it is still the husband who makes all the important financial decisions.

That can lead to big...

A doctor who specializes in dementia has an idea for an advanced directive. It is designed to ensure that he does not continue working, when he is no longer able to do so, as effectively as he did when he was younger.

When we think about people who suffer from dementia, we think about people who have retired. We do not often think about the people who are still working but who have started suffering from cognitive decline. However, almost everybody has likely had an older colleague at some point, who seemed to slow down and make more mistakes in a professional setting.

This can be a problem for the older colleague, who might get...

When a close family member passes away, there are certain steps that you should take, as soon as you possibly can.

Death can be overwhelming for the family of the deceased. On top of the grieving process itself, there are many other things which families have to deal with. There are obvious things that need to be done, such as planning a memorial and burial or cremation.

There are also legal issues with the estate that also need to be resolved and the sooner the better. Getting a handle on those legal things can be difficult.

Taking a few steps can make things much easier, as Kiplinger discussed in "5 Things to Do the Moment a Loved One...

People are planning more for their pet's care after the owner passes away today. They are also planning more for the personal items they have purchased for their pets.

In the last few years, stories about wealthy people who have left large sums of money in their estate plans for the care of their pets have gone from rare curiosities to commonplace. Providing money for a pet's care in an estate plan is not just for the wealthy anymore.

Planning for pets has become an important part of many estate plans. What is still somewhat rare, however, is making special provisions in an estate plan for personal property for pets. That could also be...

There is a very simple way to know when you should make changes to your estate plan.

When you create an estate plan, the attorney who drafted it for you, will likely remind you to review the estate plan from time to time and make changes. This often prompts clients to ask exactly when they need to do that. The common answer is that you should review and make changes to your plan, whenever you have a significant change in life circumstances.

That is the legally appropriate answer. However, the answer also invites questions about what constitutes a significant change in life circumstances. There is a simpler way to look at this, as the...

Estate planning is not just for the wealthy. People of more modest means can also benefit from it. It does not have to be difficult.

When you start talking to people about planning their estates, they often respond in a similar way. It goes something like this: "I am not rich. I am a regular guy and do not have very much. There is no reason for me to go through the difficult process of getting an estate plan. My family will work everything out after I pass away."

The assumptions being made here are that estate planning is difficult and non-wealthy people do not need to do it. As to the latter, anyone who wants to have a say in who gets...

People who suffer from dementia often act differently at different times of the day. It is common for many to get worse near sundown.

If you use an alarm clock to wake up at the same time every day, you may reach a point where you do not really need the clock. Instead, you may sometimes wake up just before the alarm normally goes off. If you forget to set the alarm, you will often wake up at about the same time as well.

This can happen even if you went to bed much later than normal the previous night. People commonly refer to this phenomenon as their “biological clock” and we all have one.

For elderly people with dementia or cognitive ...

By changing how they define Alzheimer's Disease, scientists hope they can better understand how it works and possibly find new treatments.

Some diseases are very easy to define, especially when it involves something physical. For example, chicken pox is defined by the presence of the active virus in your bloodstream and the physical marks associated with the disease.

Other diseases are defined by the presence of certain symptoms, such as various mental health diseases and Alzheimer's is one of the latter. It is defined by people who have certain symptoms.

Some scientists would like to change that for research purposes as NPR reports in

Should you be notified that you are the potential beneficiary of someone's estate, then what happens next depends on state laws.

When a will is filed in probate court, one of the first things normally required is to notify everyone who is named in the will or who may potentially benefit from the will. Sometimes, that can be many people, as is the case of the recently deceased actor John Mahoney.

His estate is worth approximately $5 million and there are 38 people who could be beneficiaries. Most of the time, the number of people notified is likely to be far less. If you are notified that you could potentially benefit from a will, you need...

Studies have shown that an increasing number of retired Americans are choosing to return to work. The reason is normally not because they need money.

Most people dream of the day when they no longer must work for a living. After a long work life, they dream of being able to do other things with their time. It does not apply to everyone, but most people look forward to retirement.

We also tend to think that retired people stay retired. However, over the last couple of decades, studies have found that an increasing number of retired people decided to go back to work. One study concluded that 40% of working Americans over the age of 65 had...

It is possible that a growing elderly population in the U.S., could lead to a shortage of caregivers available to assist the elderly.

A couple of very large problems are looming on the horizon for the U.S., because of an increasingly aging population that is living longer on average than previous generations. These looming problems include not having enough trained caregivers to assist the aging populace and coming up with the money to properly care for seniors.

We know that both these things could potentially be a problem and we do not know what will happen, if the issues are not addressed before they become problems. However, other...

Criminal scammers like to target seniors because they are often easier for them to fool.

Most people have probably been the victim of a scam of some sort. Even if it was a benign scam, like someone tricking us into believing something that is false, it still counts as being scammed. Anyone can be the victim of a scam.

However, when unscrupulous people try to scam others with criminal intent, usually out of money, then such criminals prefer to take the path of least resistance to make their schemes successful. That means many scammers prefer to target the elderly, whenever possible. This is because the elderly are more likely to suffer...

If you look around your home, you can probably find a lot of items that are precious to you that your kids would prefer not to receive as part of their inheritances.

One of the smaller but significant mistakes in estate planning is when parents make assumptions about what items of personal property their children might like to inherit. For example, a parent might have collectible plates that have been purchased through the years, but the children might not have any interest in them.

Why? Perhaps many other people have the same plates, making the plates not worth very much in the present market.

Inheriting such things becomes a burden for...

Actor John Mahoney recently passed away while in hospice care. He left behind an estate that is worth millions, with many possible heirs.

Actor John Mahoney had a long and distinguished career as an actor in a variety of roles. He was best known for his award-winning work on the TV show Frasier, in which he played the main character's elderly father.

He passed away recently at a hospice, while suffering from a variety of illnesses. Friends, former co-workers and fans have shown an immense amount of grief over the loss.

One friend recently petitioned a court to open a probate case to settle Mahoney's estate, as TMZ reported in "'Frasier'...

One of the most important things that you need to know if you have a will, is when to review and make changes.

It is likely that you will experience many changes in your life throughout your adult years. Those changes will not only be personal, such as getting married and having children, but also financial, such as getting a promotion or changing jobs for greater income. The various changes in your life make it likely that you will want to adjust how you distribute your estate.

Your life can look radically different at age 70 compared to when you were age 30. Not every change in your life will necessitate a change to your estate plans....

Estate planning for assets that are unique, such as antiques, artwork or collectibles requires special attention and care.

When planning for your estate it is important to know the value of your assets. That way you can make sure everything is distributed between your family members in the proportions you want.

The value is easy to determine for financial accounts. It is also easy for things that are routinely bought and sold in open markets such as cars. However, there are many other items in your estate that are more difficult to value.

Artwork, for example, normally does not receive a specific value until someone purchases it at an...