There are a number of reasons why people avoid hiring a lawyer to assist them in their estate planning. Lawyers can be perceived as expensive and a hassle to deal with. Frankly, some people simply find dealing with an attorney stressful. And there certainly are some things that can be taken care of without legal […]
Sometimes people consider estate planning to be a fairly simple thing to do themselves without the need to consult an attorney. After all, estate planning documents are merely paper, right? Well, although estate planning documents are indeed merely paper with printed words, there is an important thought process behind what should or should not be […]
This week we will look at an example of a celebrity who appears to have made a number of wise decisions in her lifetime estate planning. In contrast to the complicated, acrimonious and all too publicly scrutinized process of settling the Estate of James Brown that we looked at last week, the estate planning of […]
As a two part series, we will look at how the estate settlement process for two different celebrities can illustrate starkly contrasting results achieved from their respective estate plans. First we will look at the settlement of the Estate of James Brown, the late entertainer whose post-mortem family affairs have proven to be just as […]
A 2014 Maine court case illustrates how some families can get into significant arguments over what seems to outside observers to be fairly insignificant things. See Estate of Greenblatt, 86 A.3d 1215 (Me. 2014). In 2008 Ada Greenblatt died childless. Her will provided for specific monetary amounts to two charities and 14 nieces and nephews, […]