Estate Planning

For many, many years  –  from the stone age through 2011, to be exact  –  attorneys in Texas regularly recommended trusts to their clients as a way to minimize or avoid estate taxes. A lot of clients heeded the siren song, and hundreds, nay, thousands, of trusts were formed. The trust documents were sent home with the clients, who, naturally, put them away in very safe and secret places. So...

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...