Houston Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorney Blog

The Houston Market is Heating Up for Business Sales

Published on: June 20, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

While valuations aren’t out of hand now, offers may climb as competition heats up.

Your business is likely an inherent part of your life. The decision to part ways with your business is complicated. It can't be easy to hand over your life's work. Nevertheless, there comes a time when it’s worth selling the business and also a time when the market is right. The mergers and acquisitions market is heating up, so is the time right for you too?

The mergers and acquisitions market is fickle, but currently seems to be on an upward swing. A recent article in Forbes reports that this swing seems to be catching even middle market companies. The article has a catchy title, too: “Why More Entrepreneurs Will Get A Phone Call Worth Millions.”

Houston Families: Are Your Beneficiary Designations Updated?

Published on: June 19, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Finally your will is finished, and you can sleep soundly knowing that your heirs will receive the assets that you intend. Right? Not necessarily.

If you've got a will, you may feel like you are all set when it comes to your estate plans. But does your will have a say in all matters? Not exactly. Be sure to keep track of all of your accounts and your beneficiary designation forms — or else your estate might swiftly break apart and into the wrong hands.

This is one of those topics we have to repeat every so often so that each beneficiary designation you sign (or don’t) will stick with you as the important document that it is. A new echo came in the voice of Yahoo News in a recent article titled “How Your Ex-Spouse Could Inherit Most of Your Money.”

Balancing Retirement and Estate Planning in Houston: Can a Roth IRA Help?

Published on: June 18, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

The question of which investment accounts you should tap first in retirement can often be a tricky one. But it gets even trickier if your goal is to leave money to heirs.

How do you balance retirement with your estate planning goals? After all, even if you plan to leave it all to your heirs, you still need to be sure you can take care of yourself to the end. What assets should you spend down first and how should you do so to maximize both end-of-life comfort and the inheritance to leave behind?

The Wall Street Journal pegs the solution in an article titled “The Most Valuable Assets to Leave for Your Heirs.” In the article there’s a strong case for the Roth IRA, and you may have heard the fanfare already. These accounts have been around for a while, but it has only been in the past few years, with the modification of a few laws, that they have become available to just about everyone. In fact, even traditional IRAs can be converted to one.

Choosing a Trustee to Control Your Houston Trust

Published on: June 17, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Here are three factors that your clients should consider when making this important decision.

How do you make sure you leave the trust in the right hands?

Picking a trustee can be a very difficult task. It is not the same as crafting words to paper – ink is cheap in a certain sense – because picking a trustee means picking the right person. You have to read people well and know the right people (or financial institutions) to pick. Financial Planning recently offered a few principals well worth mulling over if you’re in the process of creating a trust in an article titled “Selecting a Trustee? 3 Factors to Consider.”

Special Needs Planning with Trusts

Published on: June 16, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Caring for children with special needs can require a lot of financial and logistical planning to ensure they're experiencing the best quality of life possible.

There is much thought and planning that goes into caring for a child with special needs. And that planning should go beyond your lifetime, just in case you are no longer here to provide the care yourself.

How can you possibly ensure for the future of your children, especially when they have certain dependencies? CNBC recently touched on this topic offering up a solution – the special needs trust. If this topic touches you and someone you love, then take a moment to read the original article titled “Special needs trusts: Helping parents provide for kids' futures.”

Financial Planning Before Dementia Strikes

Published on: June 13, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Not only can dementia lead to poor financial decision-making; it can also make sufferers susceptible to financial fraud.

You cannot predict whether or not you or your spouse will develop dementia later in life. But because dementia is such a real possibility to face for many Houston households, it is one better faced sooner rather than later. Proper planning can reduce the inevitable stress on all concerned.

The issue of dementia in planning was recently addressed by MarketWatch in article titled “Stunning study on dementia, couples and money.” The results of the study mentioned are multifaceted. However, there is one obvious data point upon which the article rotates – the vast majority of households turn over financial control to the unimpaired spouse once the original leader of family finances shows signs of dementia. Unfortunately, dementia doesn’t work that way; it’s far too subtle. This means that many households may have waited too long, and then the unimpaired spouse is left to learn all of the finances and pick up any broken pieces from a spouse who may be unable to fully account for it all. That is a glass half empty, unfortunately.

Wealth Distribution Options for the Single or Childless

Published on: June 12, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

"We say to people: 'If you do nothing, your money will go to the state. Is that what you want?' That's enough to make them want to consider something else," says Andrew Russell, a certified financial planner in San Diego.

If you have no spouse or children, you may feel like you have an estate planning dilemma. How do you plan when there is no one to plan for? For an increasing portion of the population there are no direct descendants, and those individuals are pondering their wealth distribution options.

Reuter’s summarized the issues in a recent article titled “Estate planning for the young, rich and childless.” It’s in one sense a case of there being no easy or automatic options. This means that the sky is the limit. The other side of the coin, however, is that there is much room for option paralysis. For most, the most rewarding decision is to find a way to give back to the community and to the causes about which you care most through charitable giving.

Prenup Vs. Domestic Asset Protection Trust

Published on: June 11, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

So how do DAPTs work in a marriage to protect assets? Do they need to be set up before the marriage? Can they be set up during the marriage?

Marriage might be that last step in bringing two people and two lives together. Nevertheless, that moment often causes one to pause, however idyllic a match may be. Cold feet is cold feet.

When it comes to bringing two financial lives together, there are some hard numbers to work through and some tough decisions to make before opening each other up to one another’s liabilities or the liability of divorce itself. You can use a prenuptial agreement – the so-called “prenup” of courthouses and tabloids alike. Alternatively, as pointed out in a recent Forbes article, titled “How To Protect Yourself In A Divorce Using A Domestic Asset Protection Trust,” you might have better luck with a Domestic Asset Protection Trust or DAPT. It’s a big topic.

End-Of-Life Decisions – What Would The Doc Do?

Published on: June 10, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

[Dr. V.J. Periyakoil] and her colleagues wanted to learn more about the attitudes of young doctors toward advance directives. So the researchers asked what choices they would make for themselves if they were terminally ill.

How do people make their end-of-life decisions? Everyone varies medically, intellectually and culturally. In addition, there are some important religious questions that may come into play. It can be very helpful to learn from the practices of others, too.

A very important perspective to consider may well be doctors themselves. According to a recent post in the New Old Age Blog of The New York Times, there is a bit of a consensus among those who wear the white lab coats.

Should Houston Women Look At Estate Planning In A Different Light?

Published on: June 9, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

It’s not that there are different estate-planning tools for each sex. But women are likelier to live longer, they’re likelier to be custodial parents and, speaking generally, women often approach the topic differently than men.

Do you think estate planning for women is different than it is for men? Gender isn’t and shouldn’t be important when it comes to so much in life. However, it actually should be something you take into account when it comes to estate planning. Men and women are simply different and often have different legal folds to their life.

On that note, MarketWatch had a bit of advice for women worth sharing in a recent article titled “How women can make estate planning easier.” The challenges that end up arising for women can seem subtle or can be outright life-altering. Either way there are important aspects to account for whether planning as a married couple or as a single person.