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Caring For Generations

Planning Allows LGBT Clients Freedom to Be Themselves

On Behalf of | Jun 4, 2020 | same sex couples

 

June is Pride Month, a time when the world’s LGBT communities come together and celebrate the freedom to be themselves. Pride events, Ayana Archie and Brandon Griggs of CNN explain, are geared toward “anyone who feels like their sexual identity falls outside the mainstream.”

At Geyer Law, we know that legal issues for LGBT individuals, and particularly for same-sex couples, often involve complexities, including planning for:

  • Income tax filing
  • Gifts
  • Inherited IRA accounts
  • ERISA pension plans
  • Social Security benefits
  • Estate planning documents
  • Adoption
  • Surrogate birth

Our legal staff takes pride in understanding Indiana law and in helping LGBT individuals and couples prepare for the future.

We were very interested in a recent article about writer-producer-director Greg Berlanti, who has an impressive track record of creating gay and trans superheroes, initially for TV and now for movies. When he first started, Berlanti relates, the challenge was to get any actors – gay or straight – to play the roles. “One of the things I’m most proud of is in helping make sure that the heroes looked and felt like the people that they are saving,” Bertlanti explained.

Meanwhile, the director of the British stage sensation, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (the story of a 16 year old boy who wants to come out as a drag queen at prom) says “It’s about how you take your place in the world.”

It’s not only on stage and screen that there are new realities. As families become increasingly varied and “nontraditional” in their dynamics, there is a full range of legal options to be explored, At Rebecca W. Geyer & Associates, our estate planning attorneys often explain that the documents we prepare generally fall into two categories:

  • Lifetime documents govern events during life, including when one becomes incapacitated and unable to make decisions about finances and/or about healthcare
  • Post-life documents govern what happens with an individual’s assets after death.

In a way, the process of dealing with estate planning decisions is about “how you take your place in the world”. We call these documents “tools” because they put control back in clients’ hands.

In-depth guided discussion and planning (to paraphrase Berlanti) help make sure the results “look like” the vision of the people who created the documents.

– by Ronnie of the Rebecca W. Geyer blog team