I am beginning to think this may be a theme I ought to address on a regular basis: As widowhood and remarriage, divorce and remarriage, blended families, cohabitation, common-law marriage, and other family and near-family relational structures become more common, I grieve for the poor judges who must make increasingly complex decisions for families whose inheritance-grantors have failed to create estate plan documents . . . or, having made such documents, have failed to keep them current.

You need to review your estate and legacy plan documents. Regularly.

I told the story of Ernest Samuelson, two months ago.

Now Stan Rule tells the story of the Sikora family: Read the rest of this entry »

Our estate planning attorney feels very confident about his ability to structure documents that will take care of all contingencies into the future. And so, when he drafted our original documents 10 years ago, he included a number of elements that are characterized as “irrevocable.” Sadly, neither Sarita nor I had any idea what these documents would mean.

Oh, we understood their intent. But since our attorney was so convinced (and convincing!) that irrevocability made our assets much safer than if we created more flexible structures; and because he didn’t ask us the kinds of questions I am learning to ask now; and since our wealth was very much less than it is today . . . we could not imagine the decisions we were making at that time might have the kinds of dramatic implications they might now (supposing our investments’ values were to grow at even a few percentage per year for the next two, three, or four decades or more). But now, we are told, there is little, if anything, we can do to reverse the decisions we made 10 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »