Mark Zuckerberg is probably the most well known of the world’s 29 billionaires under the age of 40. He and his college roommates originally developed and launched a social media company, Facebook, while they were still at Harvard. Facebook took off so quickly that Zuckerberg became a billionaire in 2007 when he was just 23 years [...]
More than three million Americans will reside in a nursing home at some point this year. Many families cannot predict when their loved one must begin to rely on outside assistance — a sudden illness can cause a previously independent senior to be in urgent need of full-time care. Families should plan for this possibility [...]
If your estate plan includes a trust, one of the most important decisions you will make is who the trustee (or trustees) should be. If the trust is one which will give the trustee(s) discretion about how much money to give the beneficiaries — and under what circumstances — then choosing the trustee may be [...]
According to a National Association of Realtors 2013 survey, vacation home sales rose to more than 550,000 last year, up about 10 percent from 2011. This means that more and more New Yorkers are likely to die owning estates that include property in another state, such as a vacation home in Maine (where fully eight [...]
As a general rule, a will must be in writing and properly witnessed to be valid in New York. You should assume that this is the sort of will you will need to make to ensure that your property is disposed of as you wish. Unlike many states, New York does not generally recognize handwritten, [...]
If you are a parent, you probably already know how a baby can change your life. But what you may not know is how the birth or adoption of a child can radically upset an estate plan. What is a pretermitted child? A child who is born after someone makes a will but before the [...]
Important life events — like births, deaths, marriage and divorce — are a good time to revisit your estate plan. (Or make a plan for the first time!) Sometimes, however, a divorced person dies without ever having changed the will that left most or all of their estate to someone they are no longer in [...]
Some of your most precious possessions may be collections of items you have accumulated over your lifetime. You have probably put a great deal of thought into who should receive these collectibles as part of your estate plan. But have you considered the tax consequences of the eventual sale of these items? Gifts of collectibles [...]
If you write a will, one of the most important decisions you make will be choosing the executor. The executor is the person in charge of presenting the will to the court and carrying out your wishes as expressed in the will. A New York elder law attorney can help you make an appropriate choice. [...]
For a variety of reasons, you may not want to leave your spouse anything from your estate when you die. For example, you might wish to give all of your property to your children or a charitable cause, and your spouse might have adequate assets of their own. A spouse is also sometimes omitted from [...]