Up to this point in the 101 Death Hacks series, we’ve mainly focused on the philosophy behind your estate plan. Starting today, we’re going to get much more practical about making an estate plan by focusing on ways to communicate your wishes and how to do that efficiently and effectively. Read on to learn about what to write down in your will and trust to make them more effective and how your estate planning can help manage the emotional transition caused by your death. [Read More]
High Five: The Zen Guide to End-of-Life Transitions
We’ve been talking this month about the Zen of planning for end-of-life transitions, but even the five step approach we’ve been talking about can seem intimidating, especially when you’re reading words on a page (or screen). So we’ve simplified things even more with our infographic: the Zen Guide to End-of-Life Transitions. [Read More]
High Five: The Zen Guide to Probate
Life is full of transitions, and the end of someone’s life can be the most significant transition of all. Amidst the emotional challenges that come with laying a loved one to rest, it can be intimidating to discover that you’ve been designated as the executor of your loved one’s estate. Then you find out you are a fiduciary and the heavy responsibility that imposes, and suddenly you’re feeling like a fish out of water. [Read More]
High Five: The Zen Guide to Planning for a Nursing Home Stay
If you’re dealing with a nursing home, it will quickly become clear that the options for paying the care bill are dizzying. Paying out of pocket is cost prohibitive. Long-term care insurance is probably not workable. For many, that leaves Medicaid, but those rules are spread over hundreds of pages of federal and state statutes, regulations, and policy manuals. What you need is an oasis from the stress, not the exponentially increasing stress that comes from trying to make sense of all those rules. Don’t despair. You can achieve calm in this whirlwind. Follow these five steps and you’ll soon find that the zen of nursing home planning is easily reached. [Read More]
High Five: The Zen Guide to Creating a Trust
Last week, we talked about the fact that many people see estate planning as an intimidating, even scary, process – only 45% of people have had their will prepared! But we also showed you the zen approach to creating your will with the help of an estate planning expert through planning ahead, organization, communication and clarity. And, surprise, those same principles apply to creating a trust. But, while the principles are the same, the zen of trust planning can be quite different from creating a will. [Read More]
High Five: The Zen Guide to Creating Your Will
Over the last seven years of advising clients, I have come to the realization that many people aren’t doing estate planning because it’s intimidating. It’s scary. Depressing. That’s a lot of negative emotion! But I don’t think estate planning is a negative experience – quite the opposite. Follow this guide to finding the Zen of creating your will, and you’ll soon discover that all those negative thoughts have been replaced by peace of mind about your final affairs. [Read More]
High Five: 5 Tips to Make Your Probate or Trust Administration Go Smoothly
Geckos are amazing and resilient creatures. They can climb up vertical surfaces. Some geckos can fly. If you cut off a gecko’s tail, they’ll grow it back. These five tips for making an estate or trust administration go smoothly create the acronym ‘GECKO’. So, keeping the amazing lizard in mind, read on for some helpful advice on how to ease the process of estate or trust administration. [Read More]
“Map of My Kingdom” – A Play Review and Response
It’s not often that an estate planner is the hero of any story, and estate planning is second only to tax law as the least exciting subject for story telling. But I think maybe that’s what makes “Map of My Kingdom” so impressive. Writer Mary Swander, Actress Cora Vander Broek-Brumlow, and director Matt Foss take an otherwise boring topic and make you love each hero and hate each villain. [Read More]
Sharing Financial and Legal Information with Your Family in Northwest Iowa
Every family has its own approach when it comes to talking about financial and legal information. However, families who are at the estate planning phase should be having at least some superficial conversations about these topics, as there is significant information which needs to be shared just to make the estate plan work smoothly. [Read More]
