“You have to be vigilant to make sure assets will pass to the other when one of you dies,” Marcia Passos Duffy writes in Bankrate.com, referring to unmarried couples living together. “When life partners don’t tie the knot,” Duffy adds, “they don’t enjoy the financial...
May an adult child be found financially responsible for a parent’s long term medical care? Back in the 1500’s, under English law, a child had a duty to contribute to the cost of a parent’s care, if parents lacked the ability to care for themselves. Does that...
“Dying without a will doesn’t damage the deceased, but it sure makes it hard on the survivors,” observed John J. Scroggin, J.S., LL.M., AEP at a regional symposium of the Financial Planning Association, citing some notable examples: (1865) Abraham Lincoln died...
As long as you have earned compensation, whether it is a regular paycheck or 1099 income for contract work, you can contribute to a Roth IRA – no matter how old you are, Fidelity reminds investors. 2017 Roth contribution limits are $5,500 for those under age 50,...
At Geyer Legal Group, PC, a full service estate planning and elder law firm, we serve the people of central Indiana. But, if you move to another state, must you get rid of your estate planning documents and start over from scratch? The answer? “Yes and no”. First...
Raymond Haerry made a thoughtful decision about his own funeral – he left instructions for his body to be brought back to the sunken USS Arizona ship on which he had served more than 70 years ago. Haerry, only 19 when his ship was attacked at Pearl Harbor, lived in...
More than twenty years have passed since Tom Stanley and William Danko published their best-selling book The Millionaire Next Door, documenting how wealthy households tend to handle their personal finances, making the statement that wealth is not what you spend, but...
There are new realities to deal with in estate planning, as families become increasing varied in their dynamics. The Raymond James Point of View names several of those new realities, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, the general increase in non-married...
“Managing family finances is difficult to begin with, but when you add in stepfamilies and half siblings, family planning becomes increasingly complicated,” Jane King and Caroline Hedges write in Financial Planning. This is no limited problem, the authors note:...
Many times, lawyers are asked by clients about financial decisions before they are made, and sometimes we’re told about them after they’ve already occurred. One example of such a decision concerns reverse mortgages. Reverse mortgages are home loans also known as...
