Friday, June 12, 2009 Press Coverage of Estate Planning This Week (June 12, 2009)Elaine Morgillo writes on www.Seacoastonline.com about the hazards of nonexistent, incomplete and obsolete estate plans and offers some advice on getting your affairs in order. See Money Matters: Don't Avoid Estate Planning (June 7, 2009).
Nolan Baker and Mark Clair write in the Toledo Free Press that 90 percent of families make mistakes on beneficiary designation forms that determine who receives proceeds from financial accounts, insurance policies and annuities. Getting beneficiary designations right is essential, because once a person dies, it's too late. See Beneficiary Mistakes Cost a Fortune (June 11, 2009).
Arden Dale of Dow Jones Newswires writes that states are taking different tacks in regard to estate plans that include provisions acting as a restraint on marriage. In Illinois, a provision that denied an inheritance to a beneficiary if the beneficiary married a non-Jewish person was ruled invalid and is now before the state's Supreme Court. In Ohio, a provision requiring a son to be married to a Jew at the time of the father's death or within seven years was upheld. Many states have not addressed the issue directly. See Using a Trust to Direct Family Wealth (June 10, 2009). |