» Estate Planning

Occasionally, clients will bring us legal documents that they created using an online service. It happened again a couple of weeks ago when long-time clients of mine came in for a trust review. I learned when we met that they had used a popular onlin… Read More

You’re Having Surgery You have the date. You know the procedure’s risks and rewards. You’re familiar with the pre-op instructions, and you’ve made arrangements to get to and from the procedure. But, do you have your estate plan in place?… Read More

I always impress upon estate planning clients the importance of updating their homeowners’ insurance after conveying real estate to a trust, even if the transfer is via a “ladybird deed” that doesn’t take effect until the client is deceased.�… Read More

There’s a National Holiday for It Raise your hand if you have your party hat on for National Estate Planning Awareness Week, which kicked off yesterday! Just me? Not surprising. Yes, National Estate Planning Awareness Week is an actual thing. Adopt… Read More

While we rarely see joint wills, they do come up often enough in conversations with clients to warrant a brief mention here. The context is usually the mistaken belief that a joint will might simplify the overall estate plan or, perhaps, result in a… Read More

In Michigan, any document that says who gets what after one’s death and that meets specific requirements constitutes a valid will.  There are exceptions to this general rule, however, allowing certain less formal documents to also qualify as wills… Read More

Your Mom Can’t Manage Money People often come into my office and promptly inform me that while they need a will and power of attorney, they do not need a trust. I always ask them to give me some time to go through their situation and explain ho… Read More

I was recently asked by clients to review a trust that had been drafted by another attorney several years ago. The trust, like many others we see and draft here at Wright Beamer, left a gift to a Michigan-based nonprofit organization that had been es… Read More