Blog Estate Planning Matters

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to make you realize the importance of sharing life experiences and making meaningful memories with the ones you love.  When we finally get an opportunity to go on vacation, we can spend so much time preparing to go: buying plane tickets, making hotel reservations, confirming rental vehicles (if you can get one), arranging for...

Many voters did not know that Prop 19 would end the long-standing protections from tax increases when property is transferred from parents to children. Prop 19 effectively abolishes prior protections and causes a property to be reassessed to market value when it is transferred from parents to children, and sometimes from grandparents to grandchildren. Not only did many voters not...

Probate really is about protecting creditors. Shannon and I do a lot of community education through workshops, seminars, and lately—webinars.  We have each been an attorney for over 15 years, handling probate matters from inception all the way to the appellate level.  We have seen so much in and out of the courtroom that we want to pass the knowledge...

Any adult could face court-ordered guardianship if they become incapacitated by illness or injury. This is such a scary thought.  Imagine becoming legally incapacitated, maybe having only slight dementia at first, in and out of lucidness.  But in those lucid moments, knowing you’re in court to have the judge (a stranger) decide what’s in your best interest, who can access...

Well the courts are open again and I had my first appearance in Downtown LA since the COVID-19 closures. It felt good to be on the freeway (surprisingly) and to see a change of scenery and it even felt good to be in the courtroom again. There was a certain normalcy that I didn’t know I had been missing. While...

Investing in life insurance is a foundational part of estate planning. However, when naming your policy’s beneficiaries, there are a number of mistakes you can make that could lead to potentially dire consequences for the very people you’re trying to protect and support. The following four mistakes are among the most common we see clients make when selecting life insurance...