RES PUBLICAE

Congratulations to Scott Brown, Esq., the new Senator-Elect for the State of Massachusetts.  By all accounts, Mr. Brown is a nice hard-working family lawyer turned politician who has an ability to connect with voters, and was willing to do the work in the trenches during the campaign to win the election. 

Knowing full well that I am being naive, somehow I hope that this election will bring some bipartisanship back to politics in D.C. The people’s business is important, from the health care reform bill to the inexplicably muddled state of the estate tax, to figuring out how to create an economic environment that gets people back to work. I hope the two parties can begin to work together again on these issues. But then again, I may have to rename this blog the South Carolina Naive Lawyer Blog.

First installment of Do-it-Yourself estate planning disasters.  Client X has three children named High, Dry, and Helpful, and no surviving spouse. Helpful is so named because she is so very helpful in caring for mom. 

So helpful in fact, that Helpful moved in with mother a few years before mom’s death to take care of her, oh, and she Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a new blog category.  I am going to attempt to collect examples of Do-It-Yourself estate plans that have led to disastrous results. I think that the internet age has led to a boom for do-it-yourselfers in many fields, and this of course includes estate planning. With Google and Legal Zoom at your finger tips, what could possibly go wrong? My guess would be inadvertantly disinheriting loved ones and astronomical litigation fees, but let’s see if we can find out for sure. Stay tuned.  

If you have read any of my previous posts, surely you know that there is no federal estate tax in the year 2010.  Unsurprisingly, this change in the law can have severe repercussions for your estate plan.

Some estate planners are sounding the alarm with regard to estate plans based on credit shelter family trusts and marital deduction trusts.  These trusts are set up in such a way that the credit shelter trust gets funded with assets up to the amount that will not be subject to estate tax due to the previously existing estate tax exemption, while the marital deduction trust gets everything else.  (This set up eliminates all federal estate tax when the first spouse passes away.)

The problem with this set up is that Read the rest of this entry »

The 2009 tax season is fast approaching! It’s the year 2010. No federal estate tax! No generation skipping transfer tax! We think. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see. One thing that is certain is that there is a federal income tax this year. In honor of tax season, I have created a new blog category, where I will provide some advice or hints on some common errors made in tax preparation. Quick post for now, til next time, ’tis the season!