Vanessa Terzian E: vterzian@lagerlof.com PH: 818-864-6174 | Edward Terzian E: consultation@inheritancerecovery.com PH: 818-579-2358
State of the Estate Tax Redux Do you know if your family would have to pay an estate tax on your assets if you died today? If you’re like most people, you’re probably worth more dead than alive. It’s not uncommon for average, middle class families to be worth over $1 million at death by…
DetailsNot The End But A New Beginning In the next two months, those words will ring out in high school graduation ceremonies all across the country. And if you have a high school senior in your home, then chances are that things are about to change dramatically, both for you and your high school senior.…
DetailsNot Too Late To Let Someone Know April 16th was National Healthcare Decisions Day. The point of this “holiday” is to encourage adults to share their private wishes about medical care and end-of-life decisions. Way too many adults harbor the mistaken belief that their loved ones would “just know” what would be desired in an…
DetailsEstate Planning for the Young? Estate planning needs a new name. When most people think of estate planning, words like elderly, wealthy, or death often come to mind. It also conjures images of vast tracks of land surrounded by high fences and homes built in the image of Versailles, right? Or is that just me?…
DetailsMore About Your Estate Plan The revocable living trust is the basic building block of most estate plans. It’s the tool that allows your estate to avoid the expense, time consumption, and uncertainty of probate court, and it is the tool that can hold just about any of your assets. While revocable living trusts are…
DetailsPlanning for the “Let’s Hope It Never Happens” Some things are unavoidable. Death and taxes are two items that fit nicely into that category. It’s almost ironic that estate planners deal largely with precisely those two issues (was Benjamin Franklin secretly an estate planning attorney?). Unfortunately, the job of an estate planning attorney is not…
DetailsThe Reciprocal Trust Doctrine Some people are just naturally ingenious. The attorneys who came up with the idea for creating reciprocal trusts belong in that category. First things first: What is a reciprocal trust? Let’s look at an example. Assume that Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins are cousins (I know . . . it’s a…
DetailsGuardianship Planning for Divorced and Blended Families For families of divorce, it may seem pretty clear cut who will raise your children if something happens to you. Absent unfitness of your ex-spouse and termination of parental rights, chances are that if something happened to you, your children would go to live permanently with the surviving…
DetailsQTIP Trusts A QTIP trust, or Qualified Terminable Interest Property trust, is a special type of A/B trust. Have I lost you yet? Not to worry… keep reading! Let’s start at the beginning. An A/B trust is a marital trust system comprised of two trusts, an A trust and a B trust. The A trust…
DetailsTeach Your Kids the Fundamentals of Money Kids generally don’t understand money innately, and until they learn that money must be earned and is in finite supply at any given time, kids are apt to develop a one-way relationship with money and become very good spenders. Those are tough habits to break. They can last…
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