WAEstate

For the average person, estate planning is mysterious at best and downright intimidating at worst. This makes complete sense given the fact that the average person has no reason to understand anything about estate planning until they sit down to start creating a plan. The problem is that human nature tends to cause people to avoid things they don’t understand. Consequently, over half of all Americans do not have even a basic estate plan in place despite acknowledging the need for one.  To help … [Read more...]

Isn’t it odd how becoming a parent prompts us to think about our own mortality? As new parents, we worry about what will happen to our child if something happens to us. If you are a parent, you probably spend a considerable amount of time when your children were young developing an estate plan that protected and provided for them in the event of your death. Now that they are adults, however, that same plan probably doesn’t work as well. Now you need to focus on how to leave assets to your adult … [Read more...]

Estate planning, when done properly, is an ongoing process. The plan you create for yourself when you are young and just starting out in the “adult world” will not be the plan you end up with when you reach your retirement years. In the meantime, you will need to revise your plan several times to take into account your growing estate and your growing family. The Grand Forks estate planning attorneys at German Law Group offer some suggestions on how to make an estate plan that takes your family’s … [Read more...]

The primary focus of most estate plans is protecting, and eventually, distributing estate assets. Until fairly recently, defining your “assets” was pretty straight-forward. Traditionally, “assets” meant real and personal property, such as a home, vehicles, bank accounts, and securities and even intangible assets such as intellectual property rights. In the 21st century, however, there is yet another type of asset that must be included in your estate planning decisions – digital assets. In the … [Read more...]

If you have not yet executed a Last Will and Testament, you likely have well-meaning friends and family who have urged you to do so.  It helps though, to know why it is so important to have a Will in place. In essence, dying without a Will gives the State the right to decide what happens to your assets. To help you better understand the importance of executing a Will, the estate planning attorneys at German Law Group explain what happens when someone dies without a Last Will and Testament in … [Read more...]