The Kate's Vine

Provide for your immediate family. The estate plan will provide enough money for your surviving spouse to continue to care for the family. If both you and your spouse pass, an estate plan will name appointed guardians to care for your children. Ensure property goes to the right beneficiaries. Your estate plan will outline exactly where your assets are to go in the event of your death. This leaves no questions to be resolved by the courts or cause for family discord. Minimize the expenses and taxes. When you take care to create an estate plan, you should be able to keep the cost of transferring any property to your named beneficiaries. #1 - Provide For Your Family Without an estate plan in place, your family will get less and it will take them longer to get it. This means your loved ones will be left in limbo and might end up without enough money to pay bills and other living expenses. It’s not uncommon for families with an unexpected death to nearly falling apart due to...

Consider the following scenario: A man goes to his lawyer’s office and tells the lawyer that the man would like to draft a will. The lawyer provides the man with a questionnaire and requests that the man go home and meet again in a few days with the questionnaire fully filled out. The man returns home and looks at the questionnaire, which asks about certain assets and whom he would like to name as beneficiaries of his estate. Over the course of the next few days, the man fills out the information. A few days later, the man and the lawyer meet again. The man presents the questionnaire and the two discuss its contents. The lawyer then says that she will draft a will over the course of the next few weeks and they will meet again to review it. Two weeks later, the man meets again with his lawyer to go over the will. The lawyer presents a 150-page will, which the two discuss. The man requests a few changes and the lawyer provides input. They decide that they will meet again the follow...

There was a recent story about a California man who was a high-level Silicon Valley executive. He met his sixth wife when he went to a bar where she worked as a waitress. They married. The honeymoon was short-lived. They battled for a while. The man passed away and left his $100 million to each his son and his daughter. For his wife, he left a measly $20. Unlike other states, California estate planning laws does not have an elective share wherein a spouse is entitled to elect a share of the estate regardless of what it says in the will. This is because California is a community property state, which means that all property acquired during the marriage gets split automatically, 50/50, to each spouse. Community Property State California is a community property state  and has been since 1850. This is despite the efforts of many to change the law. The concept behind the law is that all property acquired during the marriage equally belongs to both spouses. Conceptually, both s...