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The short answer is: it depends. As Miranda explains in the above video, there are many factors that go into determining what type of Estate Plan is best for you. For example, if you have a Will but own real property, you should consider creating a Trust to give you more control over your assets and avoid Probate at your death.
Hi, everybody. My name is Miranda Dressler and I am an attorney with the Law Offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. Today, I am going to talk to you a bit about the option of choosing either a private fiduciary or a corporate fiduciary as the trustee of your trust. So, in most cases when we prepare an estate plan for people, you know, typically people will choose a friend. Or maybe a child or more than one of their children and name that individual person as the successor trustee of their trust. So, there are many reasons [...]
Hi everybody, my name's Miranda Dressler and I'm an attorney with the Law Offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. And today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about something that most every client I've ever met with initially says to me when I first sit down with them and that is, "well we're very simple. So, this should be a straightforward process or an easy process." And I think that what most people mean when they say "we're simple" is they're referring to their assets. We just have a house and a retirement account and [...]
Hi everybody. Miranda Dressler here, attorney with the Law Offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. And in this blog, I'm going to continue to talk about what to do if your parents have named you as the trustee of their trust. And in this second part of the blog (click here for part one)I'm going to be discussing specifically acting as trustee once both of your parents have in fact passed away. So, in this scenario if you haven't already taken over as trustee while your parents were still alive. You're going to need to take steps to [...]
Hi everybody, Miranda Dressler here. Attorney with the law offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma, California. And today I'm going to talk to you about what to do if your parents have told you that they've named you as their trustee in their trust. If your parents have told you as much that they've named you as trustee in their estate plan what do you need to do? What are the steps you need to take? Well, you know, typically you should know how the trust is set up. For the most part your parents are going to be [...]
Hi there. Bridget Mackay at the Law Offices of Bridget Mackay here in Petaluma, California. Today I want to talk to you about the four assets that don't actually go into your Trust. So, there's sort of a myth out there when you get your Trust done, hopefully by a qualified attorney, that all of your assets are going to get, go into that Trust or be funded to that Trust. If you have questions about funding, I've done a blog before about it. What assets go in, what that process involves. So, check it out. Here are four [...]
Who Can Be a Trustee? Choose More Than One? Hi there, Bridget Mackay. I'm an estate planning attorney in Petaluma practicing in the area of estate planning and elder law. This video blog series addresses some lessons we can learn from the Game of Thrones. I last talked about the Stark family, who for me is my favorite house in the series. And a good lesson, another of many good lessons we can learn from the Starks, is to, if you have an estate planner or you've made a trust or you're about to create a trust with your attorney. [...]
Living Trust Vs Will In California – Lessons Learned From GoT Hi there, Bridget Mackay here again. Following up on our Game of Thrones theme and how it applies to estate planning. I'm an attorney in Petaluma and I practice in the area of estate planning and elder law. We last talked about not doing a "do-it-yourself" will like King Robert Baratheon did in Season one. Following along with that, if we look at the Stark family. Don't stop at a will. It's really important for you to maybe do a thorough trust and take care of everybody in [...]
Importance Of Properly Funding A Trust Hi here, Bridget Mackay here with the offices of Bridget Mackay in Petaluma. We do estate planning and elder law. And I want to talk a little bit today about what happens if you haven't put all of your assets in your trust? Here in our office we call that "funding" your trust or your estate plan. And unfortunately, we see this situation quite often. Just the other day I have clients, or new clients that came in. They had gotten a trust done with another attorney. And in the file, they had [...]
Reviewing Your Trusts Is Important: Don’t Put It Off Life can change rapidly. People marry, have children and grandchildren, sometimes divorce, deal with the death of family members, buy, sell and inherit property. And that barely scratches the surface. On top of that, estate and tax laws change. Life and legal changes can sometimes render your trusts obsolete or create conditions where your trusts produce unintended results. That’s why it’s important to regularly review your trusts. Changes in the Law Changes in state and federal estate and tax laws can impact your trusts in any year, but if you have [...]
