If you are among the millions of Americans who prefer to lease a car rather than buy it, you have obligations that are spelled out in the lease agreement. That contract and the laws of your state direct what happens, when a lease owner passes away. What if the salesman…
If you’ve got a fair amount of equity in your home and no other way to cover a healthcare cost or if the bills are coming in faster than your retirement accounts can manage, it might be time to consider a reverse mortgage. For retirees in a financial tight spot,…
Whether you and your spouse have a pre or post nuptial agreement, they are a good way to make divorce or death a little less overwhelming. If you are wealthy, expect an inheritance or have been married before and have children from a prior marriage, you may want to consider…
Balancing careers, children, college funds and aging parents present the same-old scenario, but this time to a new generation with a different value system. Members of Generation X, who straddle a fairly wide age range, from late 30s to early 50s, are feeling the crunch of being responsible for their…
It is important to understand the basics of special needs planning, so that you can plan for your child’s future. There are many issues to address, but an experienced Houston estate planning professional will be able to help. Special needs planning is challenging. It’s important to have a strong team…
It seems like families need to spend more time discussing estate plans and their finances, especially if they are blended families, to prevent major disruptions. For the second consecutive year, family conflict was named as the biggest treat to estate planning by estate planning and elder law attorneys and other…
There was a time when most people had three sources of income in retirement. One was their savings, the second was Social Security and the third was their pension from work. Today, very few workers enjoy the security of a pension, and retirement income is dependent on each person’s ability…
You may know that there are tax traps when IRA withdrawals or rollovers are done incorrectly. However, did you know that an investment portfolio could contain a tax trap that could ruin your IRA status? The most frequently occurring IRA tax trap comes from tax bills through the Unrelated Business…
These may be common mistakes, but they are too important to dismiss and delay. Every year, local television news crews show up at local post offices to see the lines of folks waiting to get their tax returns postmarked on April 15—even when so many of us are using online…
The period before retirement is a time when people dream about what the future might hold. They also worry, because who hasn’t heard the stories about retirees who return to work because they retired too early? It’s no surprise then that little more than half of Americans surveyed by the…