Last month we did a Facebook post about the latest on the Michael Jackson estate - yes, it is still open. The crux was this: the IRS valued Michael Jackson's image - an asset under California law - at a whopping $434 million. The estate valued it at . . . $2,105. The IRS is currently suing the estat...
You hear about simple wills all the time. Usually, it means someone executed ‘just’ a will, a will that took care of everything without the need for trusts. You know, simple. We find that a lot of people also think: simple will, simple probate, no problems, no worries. It’s a natural enough as...
You hear about simple wills all the time. Usually, it means someone executed ‘just’ a will, a will that took care of everything without the need for trusts. You know, simple. We find that a lot of people also think: simple will, simple probate, no problems, no worries. It’s a natural enough as...
What about a probate case where the deceased was a French citizen living in the United States for tax reasons who left a California will bequeathing his French property to his fourth wife? Now add this - that will disinherited his two children from his first wife, a violation of French law, and the ...
We haven't talked about relatives in awhile. That hit home seeing some write-ups of the recent release of the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairies books - you know, the books the TV series was based on. Not exactly an article that would normally make one ...
How important is the handling of debt during the probate process? Well, let's put it this way, probate courts probably wouldn't exist as we recognize them today if it weren't for the question of debt after death. Wills have been around since ancient times. They go back to the Greeks and Romans. One...
You probably know what your house is worth at any given time. Your 401k, pension plan, bank accounts, are all easy to value, you can find them on-line in a matter of minutes. But what about personal items, especially items that we think might be valuable but are entirely dependent on the marketplace...
A lot of estates are comprised of businesses that still have to operate while the probate court does its work. And more than a few of those estates are the estates of the owner and sole decision maker of that business. That complicates matters. As it has been since the unfortunate death of Prince ea...
'Dead Hand' is not the title of one of next season's Walking Dead episodes. It is a term used to describe certain clauses in some wills and trusts. From the Beastie Boys to the great playwrights Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee, to Franz Kafka, to parents worried about the spending habits of their a...
We write and talk a lot about valuations during the probate process. We tend to take the valuation process a little for granted. After all, usually it's 'get the asset appraised, maybe a few times to be safe, then move on'. It's not always that easy, however. Figuring out what something is worth at...
Lawyers in estate planning and probate cases sometimes have a unique perspective on families and relationships. Not Tolstoy "every happy family" perspective, but a pretty in-depth perspective nevertheless. That is hardly a secret, it seems that families know it - or at least sense it - most of the t...
A quick note about something that seems simple but always seems to get a big reaction at our workshops when we bring it up. It doesn't get laughs or comments, just a lot of people shifting in chairs and giving each other that ‘boy, have we all been through this’ look. That happens when we ta...
