When property belongs to one person, it is generally easy to figure out who owns all the equity, and who decides where ownership over the property will be transferred in the future. But in many cases, property is not owned by a single person or entity. When two or more people own property, that property
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A pour-over will is an estate planning document built to ensure that anything in your estate that has not been funded into your living trust before your death is automatically funded into your trust afterwards. Pour-over wills exist to generally to prevent having assets outside of the trust after death. If one is building an
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Preparation is always good. We have no way of knowing what the future might hold, and with a little bit of foresight, we can save ourselves and our families a lot of grief and trouble. That is the basic ethos behind estate planning tools like durable power of attorney documents (POAs), which enable someone (an
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When we die, everything we own must be distributed among the living. Aside from some relatively fringe exceptions where people have requested to be buried with all sorts of belongings, the dead cannot “own” anything per se, and as such, must pass property on to their loved ones and next of kin. An estate plan
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Estate planning tools have long been one of the only ways for LGBT couples to ensure that a part of what they own is left behind for their partner. An estate plan constitutes a list of documents and legal precautions created with the explicit purpose of preparing for death. While grim on the surface, an
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Estate plans are typically built to deal with matters of property and wealth after death, ensuring that ownership between generations is transferred as per the decedent’s wishes. But there is more to an estate plan than determining who gets the house and who gets the vinyl collection. Many elements of an estate plan are crucial
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Infidelity is the act of betraying someone’s trust. Its opposite is fidelity, which involves loyalty. In the very same linguistic branch, we have “fiduciary”, which describes a relationship of trust and responsibility between two individuals, where one (the fiduciary) is acting as a representative for the other (the principal). In estate planning, the planner, grantor,
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A trust checking account is a bank account set aside to hold assets in-trust for beneficiaries, as well as funds for paying expenses and miscellaneous fees during the distribution and dissolution of a trust agreement. Either the grantor/settlor of a trust or their trustee can set up a trust checking account, and these accounts make
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A trust protector’s original duty was to fire a trustee should they act out of self-interest or in a way that does not align with their fiduciary duty towards the grantor of the trust (i.e. you). Trust protectors were not commonly an element of American trust law until quite recently and were typically seen in
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A power of attorney and a will are two very different documents, and even when one person is appointed as both someone’s agent and their executor, the tasks that each position entail are very different as well. In the state of California, you can choose to have the same person take on the role of
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