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An estate plan can provide significant peace of mind by ensuring your assets are protected, plans are in place in the event you become ill, and your property is passed down according to your wishes.

Estate planning can be a very difficult process. Making the decision to move forward with the planning requires you to make estate plan decisions with your attorney.

1. Protections for family members (against divorce, creditors, spendthrift behavior, etc.). 2. Disability – Special Needs Trust – this will allow a disabled beneficiary to continue tor eceive SSI and Medicaid 3. Divorce – redo estate plan; guaranty that your children will inherit your estate

Take a look at some of the ways an estate plan and business attorney can help you and your family. If you need assistance with anything outlined in this list, don't hesitate to contact Rod K. Sutherland, Attorney At Law today.

A properly prepared and funded living trust has many benefits, including avoiding court interference at death and incapacity. But people often make mistakes that prevent their trusts from working the way they intended.

Some of my estate plan clients are concerned not only with transmitting their estates in a tax-efficient manner, and with the protections a trust affords, but also structuring their estate plans such that the lives of their children (and, perhaps, grandchildren and more remote descendants as well) are truly enhanced when they become beneficiaries.

This article examines the unique planning requirements of families with children, grandchildren, or other family members (such as parents) with special needs. There are many misconceptions in this area that result in costly mistakes in planning for the special needs beneficiaries. It is therefore very important to ensure that our clients understand all of their options.

Virginia became the thirteenth state to permit a settlor to establish an irrevocable trust of which the settlor is a beneficiary and receive spendthrift protection against the claims of the settlor’s creditors beginning on July 1, 2012.

Many people, especially seniors, see joint ownership of investment and bank accounts as a cheap and easy way to avoid probate since joint property passes automatically to the joint owner at death. Joint ownership can also be an easy way to plan for incapacity since the joint owner of accounts can pay bills and manage investments if the primary owner ...

People often hear things about living trusts from friends, family members and the media, and just assume they are true without taking the time to check them out. Here are some common misconceptions—and the facts.