Death

Unfortunate fact: your debts do not die with you.  They continue to burden your property after your death.   This is a big deal.  Your creditors can go after the property that goes through your probate estate and the property that passes under beneficiary designation.  It is fair to say that your beneficiaries or heirs take their share of your property under the threat that it may be pulled back by a...

A Personal Perspective This year the t-shirt was bright green with “Running Wild at Camp McAuliffe” splashed across the front.  In smaller print, just as it has been for the last 20 years, were the words “Tom Hammerle Rock & Run.”   McAuliffe Elementary School holds a run at the end of every school year to raise money for childhood cancer research.  Every student in the school participates and every student knows...

It is Halloween, which means that front yards everywhere are filled with plastic tombstones, monstrous animated spiders and tissue-ghouls hanging from trees. Which brings up an interesting question: why not have the real thing in your backyard? You could have your very own cemetery containing real dead people mere steps from your back patio.  Just think of the convenience for all involved. It turns out that, while family burial plots are not...

There’s a new form in town:  Beneficiary Designation for a Motor Vehicle. If you own a vehicle registered in Texas, then you can name a beneficiary who will take title to the car when you die. How do you make this happen?  For now, you will probably have to stand in line at the county tax assessor-collector’s office to submit the forms.  You must submit the beneficiary form  an Application for...

Ever wonder what will happen to your Facebook account when you die? Here is your answer: TRUFADAA. It stands for Texas Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which is found in Chapter 2001 of the Texas Estates Code and sets out the scheme for handling digital assets when a person dies or becomes incapacitated. TRUFADAA replaced the original Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Access Act, an unfortunate experiment...

Little known laws are the light of a litigator’s life. Example: the law of cemetery plots. The right to be buried in a certain plot is known as “the exclusive right of sepulture.” The right is usually conveyed to the person via a certificate of ownership, although that is not the only way it may be conveyed. A plot may hold contain more than one grave, niche or crypt. A cemetery plot isn’t treated like...