Most people can’t wait for retirement, and even more would likely opt for some form of early retirement, if they had the opportunity. Whenever you ultimately decide to cut down your time at work or leave the workforce altogether, you need to ensure that you have a full slate of estate planning documents in place.
When Pablo Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91, he left behind about 45,000 works of art – so many that it would take the entire Empire State Building to display them all at the same time – and yet he didn’t leave a will.
Build your own medical emergency packet.
Photographs in the cloud, Facebook and Instagram accounts, bank and other financial accounts, and a host of other accounts and data are at our fingertips on electronic devices.
For example, did you name someone as an heir who is no longer in favor with you or—worse yet—has died? Who should get what they would have gotten? Are there now new people in your life—be they family members or not—whom you might wish to share in what you may have?
The possibility that a power of attorney might be rejected may be one reason not to simply pull a form off the internet and hope it will be accepted.
Estate planning documents often are treated like the photocopied permission slip for a child’s field trip. You fill in your name, include the children’s names and dates of birth and sign. The document is filed away to be used if needed, but you really never expect it to be used.
Orlando Cepeda wants to know where his money went. He also wants to learn what happened to all of his baseball memorabilia, including his 1967 National League Most Valuable Player Award, and wants to be made whole.
The heirs to Henry Ford II – the eldest grandson of legendary Henry Ford – filed a legal challenge against their late patriarch’s attorney, Frank Chopin, who is now the champion of Ford’s widow, Kathleen DuRoss Ford, 80.
Eighty-five million families in the United States own at least one pet. That’s 68% of the population. How many of those owners have a plan for what would happen to their pet, if they themselves met with a crisis, had a lengthy hospitalization, or died?