Houston Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorney Blog

Houston Estates Can Include Plans For Everything – Plants Included!

Published on: June 4, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

"This plant will definitely outlive me," said Ms. Scoratow, a landlady who is 63 years old and in good health. "After I pass, I don't want her to go unloved."

Your estate plan should include everything that is dear to you. Once you are gone you'll want to make sure your wishes are carried out accordingly. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal illustrated one way of making sure everything is taken care of after you are gone. The article is titled “A Woman's Will Provides Funds for Trusty Houseplant Upon Her Death.”

The article chronicles the curious case of Ronna Scoratow, her will, and her trusty 42-year-old philodendron. Ms. Scoratow, having no children or horticulturally-minded next-of-kin, simply had no automatic option for the future care of her prized plant. Beside, this is not your average houseplant that is easy to move around.

Does Your Better Half Know The Plan For Your Houston Estate?

Published on: June 3, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Estate planning isn't exactly my idea of fun, but it's absolutely necessary. Just like you're planning for retirement, you need to plan for the inevitable.

If you have taken the vow of “until death do us part,” have you considered what will happen if you are no longer here? Does your spouse know and understand your estate plan? Will your spouse be able to manage what you leave behind?

Estate planning for married persons begins with thinking about the future security of your spouse in a world without you. In many ways, you likely assume that your spouse is prepared to take over. However, this is a potentially dangerous assumption and one that should not be taken for granted. In fact, many things can go awry, both practically and legally, unless you and your spouse have specifically talked them over.

Houston: Don’t Make These Three Legal Mistakes!

Published on: June 2, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

I think it’s important for people to understand the consequences of inattention to legal matters and of not involving an attorney. “Penny wise and pound foolish” can be a particularly compelling adage when dealing with legal matters.

More often than not, when an estate plan fails and litigation follows it is because the estate plan was not a good plan at all. Legal mistakes and cut-corners are liabilities not worth keeping on the books, as a growing body of case law goes to show. Do not let a legal mistake haunt your estate, your assets or your family after you are gone.

When it comes to estate planning, the liability of legal mistakes and cut-corners has a special kind of edge to it since it is so often the family or your partners who end up feeling the burden or even winding up in litigation. What do these cases look like and what terrible mistakes have been made?

Giving To A Houston Graduate

Published on: May 30, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

When her son recently turned 18, Lisa Kirchenbauer and her husband had him sign papers to take control of an account for minors they had long ago set up as a college fund – which had grown to about $60,000. "What if I ran out and bought a car with it?" he asked.

It is graduation season, which means it is graduation gift-giving season. If you hope to mark your loved one’s accomplishment with a sizeable gift, then how do you ensure that such gift is not squandered?

To mark a milestone with a financial gift can be something of a carrot-and-stick opportunity. If that is the case, then the trick is to ensure that the gift encourages positive possibilities instead of some shiny mess with a new car smell. Reuters recently provided some advice on this timely topic in an article titled “Four ways to influence how new grads handle money.”

Married? Consider These Eight Estate Planning Goals for Houston Couples

Published on: May 29, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Knowing these objectives help both the couple and their estate planner determine what might be the best way to structure their estate plan. Below are eight of the most common estate planning objectives that influence a couple’s estate plan.

Planning for just you and your hopes takes a lot of work. While you may be of one mind (literally), there is much to think about, values to weigh, and options to select. But what about married couples? However close, married couples are not just of “one” mind and, accordingly, as a couple will have that much more to think through and plan. As a married couple planning for your estates, what should your objectives be?

How, where and why do married couples come together in their planning and what values or strategies should they work to support? There is no one answer because this has everything to do with the couple, their assets, their loves ones, and their many hopes besides. Nevertheless, even unique couples can find themselves pursuing common objectives by one tool or another. Forbes offered a helpful little list of eight common objectives for married couples planning their estates in a recent article titled “Eight Common Estate Planning Objectives Of Married Couples.”

Creating Inheritance Incentives For Houston Heirs

Published on: May 28, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

The vast majority of estate planning lawyers get requests for trusts that "motivate responsible behavior by the next generation," said Los Angeles lawyer Jon Gallo, who presented an overview of the topic at the annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning.

If you are leaving behind an inheritance for the good of your young loved ones, you likely want to ensure that the inheritance will be a blessing and not a curse. Are they ready for the responsibility of having wealth? Or will they use it for "fun" to their own detriment? With careful planning you can make the inheritance itself provide the incentive to engage in good behaviors.

Incentivized inheritances offer you the chance to give the gift of possibilities and a secure future. Properly planned, such an inheritance can make your heirs pause to respect the inheritance and take responsibility for it. The Chicago Tribune looked into the topic in a recent article titled “Making sure your kids are trustworthy.”

Care Choices For Elderly Loved Ones in Houston

Published on: May 27, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

How do I know what kind of caregiver my family member needs?How do I go about finding a home caregiver?What if I prefer to hire someone myself?

Choosing care for an elderly loved one can be challenging as it requires much research and thought. Their needs will determine the type of care, as well as the costs involved. Recently, The New York Times had some useful perspective and helpful tips on this issue with an article titled “Tips for Choosing Care for an Aging or Ailing Family Member.”

The range of needs an elderly loved one can develop, and for which you might seek aid, can run the gamut from simple to life-threatening, medical to cosmetic, and everything in between. Just as there’s not just one need, there certainly isn’t just one option out there for care. For instance, you might need someone to do basic housekeeping like cooking and cleaning. A hired homemaker can take care of these chores with gusto so long as no personal or medical care is needed. For a bit more, a home health aide can help with trickier needs like dressing and bathing assistance, but not actual medical care. And then once you get into the home healthcare arena, there are even more shades of care and ways of paying for such services.

Passing On A Prized Collection To Your Houston Heirs

Published on: May 26, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

It may take some expert help to work out how to pass the pieces to your heirs. Parents' collectibles can hold emotional meaning for adult children, and some collections carry financial value as well.

Estate planning is all about deciding how to dispose of your assets, but when it comes to assets, collections can be fairly problematic. After all, the reason it’s a “collection” is because the whole is worth something greater than the sum of its parts. You simply don’t have an unrelated list of items that you can just casually split up (or do you?). Kiplinger recently explored this challenge in an article titled “Leaving a Collection to Your Heirs.”

The fundamental question is this: what is your hope for your collection? Does the collection live on, and if so, under who’s watch? You might want the collection to stay together or to stay in the family for generations. This commonly is the case when the items are family relics or antiques. In addition, collectible assets can raise other vexing issues like possible taxation or even legal difficulties (an exotic gun collection, for example).

A Strategic Plan For Gifting for Houston Families

Published on: May 23, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Here are a few easy approaches that can reduce or avoid taxes, and are also effective wealth transfer techniques.

Gifting makes up one of the pillars of estate planning. Strategic gifting can mean all the difference between a plan for family wealth that works and a plan that doesn’t. Forbes recently offered a helpful list of strategies in an article titled “5 Family Gifting Strategies.” This article brings some important techniques front and center.

Houston Residents: Will Your Wealth Continue On?

Published on: May 22, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

To make that wealth last forever, you're probably going to need future generations to replenish that wealth.

If you have wealth to pass on to the next generation, have you hoped that your wealth will continue on for generations to come? It's a tough goal to have, considering you'll be depending on the next generation to keep the wealth going instead of squandering it away. However grand your goals may be, there is a startling trend of inheritances that fail to lift up the family.

The startling trend of failed inheritances is known as "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves", and Reuters picked up on the issue in a recent article titled “How wealthy families blow their assets.” It seems the kinds of problems that can arise within a family are multifaceted, but the numbers tell a similar story: inheritances have a failure rate at 90 percent by the third year.