Category: Legal information

estate planning

Where to keep your Estate Plan?

 Where should you keep estate-planning documents prepared by your attorney?  Where should people expect to find your living trust, will, durable power of attorney and advance health care directive? You want to be sure that those documents stay safe and can be easily found when your family needs to find them. For those of you more »

Powers of Attorney

Thoughts on Durable Powers of Attorney.

Typically a durable power of attorney can become effective in two ways. First, it can be effective immediately upon execution. Or, second, it can be made effective upon incapacity of the principal. If it is effective immediately, then the agents named in the durable power of attorney can act under any of the powers in more »

Inheritance kids

Don’t Do What This Grandmother Did to Disinherit the Grandkids

Remember when grandma asked you to visit? Some grandchildren in Austria didn’t and Grandma went to extraordinary lengths to keep her family from getting her money. She shredded over $1 million USD right before she died. Not happy to stop at that, she cut up her bank books. According to Forbes, the shredded bits were more »

Probate conflicts and their cause and cure

Probate conflicts and their cause and cure

In my experience as an Orange County Probate Lawyer, the vast majority of estates are settled without difficulty. Still about twenty percent of all estates have some type of conflict. These estate conflicts are expensive and directly impact the amount of estate assets, including cash, that pass on to the heirs. Just having an up-to-date more »