Amy's Angle

  What the Netflix Series Tiger King Can Teach You About Estate Planning-Part 2 by Amy Clemmons Brown, Esq. Anyone who has seen the hit Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness can attest that it’s one of the most outlandish stories to come out in a year full of outlandish stories. And while Tiger King’s sordid tale of big cats, murder-for-hire, polygamy, and a missing millionaire may seem too outrageous to have any relevance to your own life, the series actually sheds light on a number of critical estate planning issues that are pertinent for practically everyone. Over seven episodes, Tiger King provides several shocking, real-life examples of how estate planning can go horribly wrong if it’s undertaken without trusted legal guidance. In this series of articles, we’ll discuss some of the worst planning mistakes made by key people in the documentary, while offering lessons for how such disasters could have been avoided with proper planning. A tale of two wills La...

  What the Netflix Series Tiger King Can Teach You About Estate Planning-Part 1 by Amy Clemmons Brown, Esq. Anyone who has seen the hit Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness can attest that it’s one of the most outlandish stories to come out in a year full of outlandish stories. And, while Tiger King’s sordid tale of big cats, murder-for-hire, polygamy, and a missing millionaire may seem too outrageous to have any relevance to your own life, the series actually sheds light on a number of critical estate planning issues that are pertinent for practically everyone. Over seven episodes, Tiger King provides several shocking, real-life examples of how estate planning can go horribly wrong if it’s undertaken without trusted legal guidance. In this series of articles, we’ll discuss some of the worst planning mistakes made by key people in the documentary, while offering lessons for how such disasters could have been avoided with proper planning. The Feud Whil...

COVID-19 Highlights Critical Need for Advance Healthcare Directives—Part 1 by Amy Clemmons Brown, Esq. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country, doctors across the nation are joining lawyers in urging Americans to create the proper estate planning documents, so medical providers can better coordinate their care should they become hospitalized with the virus.  The most critical planning tools for this purpose are medical power of attorney and a living will, advance healthcare directives that work together to help describe your wishes for medical treatment and end-of-life care in the event you’re unable to express your own wishes. In light of COVID-19, even those who have already created these documents should revisit them to ensure they are up-to-date and address specific scenarios related to the corona virus. While all adults over age 18 should put these documents in place as soon as possible, if you are over age 60 or have a chronic underlying health condition...

How Do Trusts Help You Save on Taxes? Many people come to us curious (or confused) about trusts and taxes. So, today’s article is going to sort it out and clarify things for you. There are two types of trusts, and each have different tax consequences. Revocable trusts, which are the far more commonly used trusts, have no tax consequences whatsoever. A revocable trust has your social security number as it’s tax identifier, and is not a separate entity from you for tax purposes. It is a separate entity from you for purposes of probate, meaning if you become incapacitated or die your Trustee can take over without a court order, keeping your family out of court. But, until your death, it’s treated as invisible from a tax perspective. At the time of your death, if your revocable trust provides for the creation of irrevocable trusts, then the tax implications will shift. When you have an irrevocable trust, either created during life, at death through a revocable livin...

The Basics of Disability Insurance and How It Can Help During COVID With the risks still posed by COVID-19, we all need to face the possibility that we could get sick, even if we take great care of ourselves through good nutrition, sleep, and exercise. And even if you don’t need to be hospitalized, if you do experience symptoms and test positive, you might have to stay quarantined for enough time that you’d lose income. These risks highlight the need for everyone, regardless of their age or current state of health, to have some form of disability insurance coverage. You might think you don’t need disability insurance, especially if you’re young and in good health. Hopefully, you’re right. Unfortunately, though, becoming disabled can happen to anyone at any time. This isn’t specific to corona virus either; it has always been true.  The Americans with Disabilities Act has detailed specifics on what a disability is, but the most basic definition is that an individual...

Who Would Care For Your Children If You Got Sick With COVID-19? The pandemic is causing us to consider a lot of things that we may not have before, even if maybe we should have. It brings to mind something a colleague of mine shared recently. One unremarkable weekend, she left her small children with a babysitter and headed out to enjoy dinner at a restaurant with her husband. But as she sat there, a thought crept into her head that she couldn’t let go. What would happen to her kids, she thought, if she and her husband got into a car accident on the way home? And even though my colleague is an estate planning lawyer herself, and she had a will at home naming guardians for her kids, she didn’t have a definite and clear answer that provided the comfort she wanted. Her will was in a vault, and her named legal guardians lived thousands of miles away.   It was that thought that spurred her to take action, not only for her own family, but to create tools and resource...

A Map to Doing the Right Things for the People You Love During the COVID-19 Pandemic Right now, huge numbers of people are coming face to face with their own mortality, and realizing they need to plan for the worst. This goes not just for those of us in the “senior” category, but for all of us, no matter our age. We are facing the reality of our mortality, and many of us are doing it courageously by taking this as an opportunity to learn what we need to do for the people we love. Recently I heard a tragic story from a colleague whose client recently lost her fiancé to COVID-19. Because she wasn’t listed on her fiancé’s health directive and HIPAA waiver, she could not get anyone to update her on his condition once he entered the hospital. Naturally, she didn’t give up trying to get in touch, and eventually someone told her that he wasn’t in the ICU anymore. She was enormously relieved, but when she hadn’t heard anything else by the next day, she called again for news. Fi...