Family

Disinheriting a child in a will can be tricky. You have every right to do so, of course, but your action will be seen by outsiders as unnatural. That is why you want to take the right steps to make the disinheritance stick.   While no method is litigation-proof, there are a couple of strategic points that you may want to consider. Make Your Intentions Clear on Disinheriting You want to be clear...

By Kendra Rey Just what is your relationship with your Valentine?  In this month of l’amour, do you know if that person you are cozying up with is your spouse or just a close friend? And what is the legal effect of that? (Leave it to a lawyer to make “Love” something debatable!) If you have gone through a ceremonial marriage with your significant other, then you know you have a...

What a strange and difficult year 2020 has been for families! Determining whether to home school children or send them back to a face to face learning environment in the midst of a pandemic has been challenging. Loss of earnings and stability has been something parents and children alike have been forced to handle. And through it all, parents have the obligation to emotionally and financially support their minor children,...

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...

Trust Disputes Tear a Family Apart Picture this: mom and dad know they will leave an inheritance when they die. They want to make sure that the money is spent by their kids wisely and is not frittered away. So they set up a trust. They pick the oldest as trustee, with the second oldest as the next trustee in line. All of the kids are beneficiaries, and even the...

Imagine that you could remember every person who has impacted your life – starting with your parents and ending with the grocery store checker from yesterday. That is a mind-boggling number of people. Now imagine that you had the ability to remember your interaction with each and every one of them. You would rapidly discover that each memory would be accompanied by an emotion - happiness, anger, laughter, jealousy, love, hate,...

Hidden among the many provisions of the Texas Estates Code is a little statutory gem called “Definitions.” There one can find helpful information about such common terms as “next of kin,” “person, ” “heir,” “distributee,” and “child.” It is the definition of “child” that the 85th Legislature recently decided to tinker with, and the resulting change should interest anyone who has nonchalantly used the term in estate planning documents. In Texas the...