Family

Picture yourself walking through a peaceful cemetery at dawn, light filtering through the leafy canopies of ancient oaks onto an array of crumbling carved gravestones.  In the distance you see a small mausoleum fronted, jarringly, with a white sign saying FOR SALE BY OWNER.   That’s probably not going to happen, at least in Texas where cemetery plots are controlled by a confusing mixture of state law and local rules.  When you...

This may sound harsh, but you need to do more for your family than just sign a will. You should also leave them a map to follow. How do you go about it? Prepare your executor.  You should have a list of all of your beneficiaries and professional advisors with their contact information. Tell your executor where you keep your original will. Tell your successor trustees where you keep your original...

Here is a wonderful way to sow seeds of dissension among your children:  lend money to one of them. To understand the calamity that you have unleashed, let’s go back to business basics. A loan is a transfer of money to someone in exchange for his or her promise to repay it.  The terms should be agreed upon before the money is transferred.  The obvious, and correct, way to handle this...

Not long ago, I published Part 1 of this Article in which I discussed the State of Texas’s rules for how your property is divided if you die without a will. For many people, that division is far from what they want done with their own assets and possessions.  It also causes sticky joint management issues between children from prior relationships (or their parent/the ex-spouse), and current spouses.  That thought...

Use the Thanksgiving family get-together wisely. Sometime between that first cocktail and the opening kick-off, gather the family around for a brief 10-minute conversation about you. It could go something like this: “I have made some plans.  I want to share them with you. “Here is a folder containing copies of my powers of attorney, directive to physicians, and designation of burial agent.  Keep it someplace handy. “Here is a list with contact information...

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...

With so much disagreement nowadays, here is one thing we can all agree on: Leaving money outright to a minor child is a really bad idea. It is such a bad idea, in fact, that most judges will take extraordinary steps to tie up the money for as long as the law permits rather than see it be squandered by a shiftless parent, guardian or 18-year old. So if there is universal...

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...