My client’s mom died earlier this year. Her sister provided her with a copy of her will, signed in 2017, which named the sister as the executor. The sister hired a lawyer, who sent my client the usual waiver and consent document to probate the will — but the copy of the will she he was a different will, from ...
A ground lease is an arrangement where the coop owns the building, but someone else owns the land under it. Sounds strange, but it’s an ancient kind of property arrangement, and it allows the owner to reap rental income in ways that are sometime desirable.
Part of the job of estate planning is thinking through the different ways the future might work out — who will survive whom, whether a beneficiary will be a minor or an adult at the time she receives the bequest. It’s important to take a range of possibilities into account.
When a close relative dies, and someone other than you has been named in the will as the executor of the estate (or applies to the court to administer the estate, if there was no will), you will receive a Waiver and Consent document and you’ll be asked to sign and return it.
It’s no joy to think about your will and what will happen after your death, but if there’s one subject that’s even harder, it’s how you would deal with medical issues in a condition of incapacity — and then it’s even harder to think about the situation of an incapacity due to dementia.
Many websites advising on what to think about when divorcing say you should be sure to change your will once it’s all over. That’s good advice, but it doesn’t go far enough. Changing your will and other legal documents should be one of the very first things you do.
If you imagine a legal problem as a big, tight knot, then you can think of Negotiation and Litigation as two ways of undoing the knot. Negotiation is like cutting through the knot, and Litigation is like unwinding it strand by strand.
1.) Don’t put it off. Misfortune can happen at any time, and it’s much better to have your wishes stated in an actionable legal form than not to.
I’m accustomed to the challenges of being an estate lawyer. But I’m not accustomed to the challenges of being a client! Rewriting my own will after a long time, I was surprised at some of the issues I encountered.
A very troubling case was referred to me recently by a close colleague who is a matrimonial attorney. His client died while in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. The result is the exact opposite of what the client would have wanted — since the husband she was divorcing was still her husband at the time of her death, he ...
