Vanessa Terzian E: vterzian@lagerlof.com PH: 818-864-6174 | Edward Terzian E: consultation@inheritancerecovery.com PH: 818-579-2358
The 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…
Guardianship 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…
QTIP 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…
Teach 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…
We All Have IP These Days Remember the days when IP—Intellectual Property—was the exclusive domain of patent attorneys, computer science majors, successful authors, and professional photographers and artists? Well, times have changed, because whether you know it or not, you’re very likely a player in the IP space…today’s world of ones and zeros (i.e. binary…
Really Talking to Your Parents Talking to parents can be very difficult. In fact, it can be more difficult to have a deep conversation if you’re really close to your parents, because frequent communication and closeness means that important subjects often get placed on the back burner, and patterns of communication take the place of…
Preserving Your Assets While You’re Alive If you’re like most people, you’re worried about keeping your money. The new mantra on Wall Street is that a “return of your money is the new return on your money.” To put it mildly, the markets are presenting a challenge for most investors. Worse, everyone has a different…
Election Year Antics Welcome to politics in 2012! Did you sign up for what we’re getting in America? In many ways, nobody is happy with the landscape. Most of us—Independents, Democrats, and Republicans alike—are unhappy (or even disgusted) with politics in general. It’s at the point of being most disgruntled, however, that we need to…
Sending The Kids Off To College Have you started thinking about the cost of a college education? Any good financial and estate plan should include provisions for financing the cost of education for your children. There are many options available to help you save for college, including college 529 savings plans, pre-paid tuition plans, and…
Different Kinds of Estate Planning Tools The type of trust we most commonly discuss on this site is, without a doubt, the revocable living trust. While revocable living trusts are certainly effective in making sure that your estate avoids a lengthy and expensive probate process, they aren’t an effective way to protect your assets or…