Hi there, Bridget Mackay from the Law Offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. Today I want to talk about stale trust and sort of keeping up to date or keeping your trusts up to date. I recently did a trust administration where the parents, the last spouse to die was the mom and they […]
Hi I’m Bridget Mackay of Law Offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. I practice in the area of estate planning and elder law. Today, I want to talk about how we treat stepchildren in our estate plan. I often get clients who have a relationship with their stepchildren, want to give them something, but […]
Hi there, Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. I do wills, trusts, estate planning and elder law. Today, I want to talk about the death of Prince, the singer, and his estate. As you know or maybe as you’ve read, he didn’t have a will or anything. All of his $200 Million in assets would go […]
I’ve written before about the high costs of probate in California. In terms of both time and money, it’s a process that most people want to avoid. But for people who own real property in multiple states, avoiding probate can be even more important. That’s because estates with real property in multiple states may need […]
Recently, I wrote about how Medi-Cal counts to $2,000 to determine who is eligible for long-term Medi-Cal. As I said then, that post was not an exhaustive list of all exempt property. One unique rule that Medi-Cal follows concerns its treatment of payments made by a long-term-care (LTC) insurance policy that has been certified by […]
Hi there, my name is Bridget Mackay. I’m an attorney in Petaluma, California. I practice in the area of wills, trusts, and estate planning, and elder law. Today, I want to talk about Pay on Death Accounts. This is an account you may have at a bank, or a Schwab, or an investment house and […]
Hi there, Bridget Mackay here in Petaluma, California. I’m an attorney and I practice exclusively in the area of wills, trust, and estate planning in elder law. Today, I want to talk about the celebrity death of Prince, the musician. I was surprised as I’m sure maybe some of you were that he had no […]
As you’ve long known if you follow my blog, it’s important to know your financial net worth. One part of that is knowing your small business’ value. This can be critical to creating an estate plan that works for you. But how do you figure out what your small business is worth, and why does […]
Many small-business owners own their businesses through a business entity, like a corporation or limited liability company (LLC). And many have chosen to have their business entity taxed as an S corporation. Most likely chose this tax treatment because it offered income-tax advantages to them during their lives, without any thought to how that choice […]
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me mention community property before, but it’s mostly been in passing. In this post, I’m going to delve into a little more detail about California’s community property system and how it affects your estate plan. California is one of less than a dozen […]
