Losing a loved one can be incredibly difficult to process, no matter how long a person might have seen it coming. You cannot prepare yourself for the pain and grief of having someone you care about disappear from this world. However, that pain can be compounded with the confusion felt from the aftermath of a
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Take two cars to the track. One is a fully-fledged drag racer, built specifically for a certain stretch of road, with a custom transmission, near-perfect aerodynamics, as little weight as possible, and just enough fuel needed to cross the finish line. Pit it against a stock Honda Civic. Which will win? Specificity is the key
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A trust is a legal entity that enables the transfer of assets from one person to the next. While all trusts have the same end goal, a different type exists for every circumstance. It works as an instrument for temporarily holding wealth under the trust’s name, separate from the original owner and beneficiary, before passing
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The probate process is one by which the law helps families determine what to do with the possessions of a deceased loved one, taking into consideration the law and their will, if it exists. While the probate process is not especially complicated, it can last well over a year, depending on the complexity of the
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Your last will and testament is a document designed to give certain courts and your family directions on how you would like your estate to be distributed in the event of your passing. It gives you the power to determine what will finally happen with your property when you are gone, giving you one final
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Estate planning can be a complicated subject. For some, their options are simple and straightforward. But there are factors that can quickly convolute a simple and straightforward topic into a matter of much research and heavy debate. In the case of estate planning, the two major factors include the nature and size of your estate,
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When we are confronted with the death of a loved one, the last thing we want to think about is a mountain of paperwork. Yet for many Americans, passing away is not just a tragedy, but a tragedy followed by a trail of legal complications. Most Americans lack a proper estate plan. These are simple
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Anything you have to your name must go somewhere after your death – and for individuals who want the ability to choose where that is, tools exist that offer several different options. These estate planning tools are sometimes seen as instruments of the super-rich, meant to maintain their wealth and cut minimally into their fortune.
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In the estate planning world, a living trust is considered a powerful and versatile tool. Through it, a person can assign beneficiaries to their wealth and property, and plan ahead to create their own administration process without a probate court watching. The trustee creates and oversees the trust. The successor trustee is the person the
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Revocable living trusts are renowned for being the better alternative to a last will and testament, because of a myriad of estate planning features, the greatest of which is the ability to skip past the probate process. But just like a will must be updated to reflect life’s major changes and deal with unexpected events,
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