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...
Hoosier Estate Planner
Awkward Conversations Can Be a Great Gift of Love
Conversations with people you love about money concerns can get awkward and tense pretty fast, writes Tobie Stanger in Consumer Reports, offering the following example: You and your two siblings inherited the lake house where your family spent many cherished summers....
Individualizing Estate Planning Using Life Insurance
Life insurance has many uses in an estate plan, observes investopedia, listing several of those uses: To provide liquidity in an estate (to pay expenses, provide access to cash for heirs while the estate is being settled) To repay debts To replace income that the...
Graduation – the Time to Put Documents in Place
The time is fast approaching when many young adults leave the nest and head for college. But, just as the famous American Express commercial cautions consumers not to “leave home without it”, referring to a credit card, at Geyer Law we caution students not to leave...
Digital Assets Deserve a Place in Your Estate Plan
With life increasingly being lived online, you may be overlooking an increasingly important kind of property – digital assets – in doing estate planning. “Amen!”, we say at Geyer Law, where, for years we’ve been cautioning clients to include online assets along with...
Keeping Farmland in the Family
Over the next decade, a quarter of our nation’s agricultural land is expected to change hands, according to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. The NRCS identifies four key goals for a strong estate plan for farm owners: Transfer ownership and management...
Do Unequal Inheritances Mean There was Undue Influence?
Whenever there is a very uneven distribution of assets among heirs, state law carries a presumption of the exercise of undue influence, a 2014 article in the Indiana Lawyer points out. Whenever it appears that a dispute among rightful heirs might result in litigation,...
Don’t Wait for a Triggering Event – Do You Know Your Own Personal Property?
Insurance company claims adjusters refer to them as “triggering events”, which might include: break-ins, tornados, hailstorms, fires or even divorces (disputed items sometimes “disappear” in the process). In any event, it’s up to the insured to prove what items were...
Between the Death and the Estate Sale are the “Feet”
In between the death and the estate sale are “the feet”. That’s the way Mary Ann Yates, president of Elder Moves, Inc., describes one of the special functions she and her team have performed in the estate settlement process over the past thirty years. “An estate sale...
Are We Wrong About Aging?
“Aging can be re-imagined as a vivid and enlivening process that presents us with extraordinary risks and rewards.” That was the concept behind last October’s national tour, Disrupt Dementia, hosted by the University of Indianapolis. The first-of-its-kind event...

