A living trust is a perfect document for protecting privacy, avoiding probate, and determining who can take care of your affairs while you’re incapacitated and after you’ve passed on. It’s often an essential element for estate plans in Santa Clara as it gives an extra layer of protection to estates and gives the trust maker, […]

Buying a home in California can be a challenge for many reasons, but one that a lot of people don’t expect is the volume of disclosures that they will receive during the process. If you’re working with a good agent, she or he should help you with the specifics of the particular property you’re considering, […]

The cost of long-term care is one of the most common dangers to the life savings of senior citizens. The fear of losing assets, possessions, and homes drives people to search out ways to protect themselves from the enormous costs associated with long-term care. Many seniors turn to long-term care insurance, which is supposed to […]

When most people put together their estate plan, they want it to be a complete and comprehensive plan to handle their affairs after they are gone. But there is one critical part of an estate plan that gets overlooked more often than any other, and that is beneficiary designations. Beneficiary designations control many of the […]

Most people are familiar with a basic Last Will and Testament but very few people in Santa Clara know what a Pour-Over Will is. Essentially, a Pour-Over Will is used in conjunction with a Trust, usually a Revocable Living Trust, and it directs that any assets you own outside of the trust at the time […]

Creating and building a successful business in Santa Clara County is incredibly difficult and maintaining that success is just as challenging. You hire accountants and lawyers to make sure you are protected from those who seek to take away what you have worked so hard to achieve, but are you protected from those that will […]

As Santa Clara elder law attorneys, our answer to this question is yes and no. In most cases, it depends on where the adult children and the elderly parent live in the country. Technically, more than half of states have laws on the books that require adult children to pay for their parent’s nursing home […]

Yet another great speaker at the most recent American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys Summit was Elaine McIntosh, President and CEO of Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care. Her talk covered a wide range of matters, but I wanted to share a few: Hospice care is related to general palliative (pain- or problem-relieving) care, and […]

Need help motivating your spouse to meet with a Will and Estate lawyer here in Santa Clara? We know from experience that the legal planning process is usually initiated by one spouse and is often met with hesitation by the other. It is understandable why one or both spouses would be reluctant to meet with […]

When clients come to see a Bay Area estate planning lawyer, they generally have multiple goals in mind. Interestingly, they don’t always realize this fact, thinking that they “just” need to put together a will that stipulates who gets what after they have passed away. While this is obviously a very important part of what […]