April 13, 2017 We know it’s hard. Thinking about someone else raising your children stops us all in our tracks. It feels crushing and too horrific to consider. But you must. If you don’t, a stranger will determine who raises your children if something happens to you...
With the number of online and do-it-yourself (DIY) legal providers continuing to grow and advertise heavily, you may be wondering if you could do your estate planning with the help of these forms. The advertising is seductive. Ads say, “attorneys use similar forms,”...
Effective in early 2017, Michigan will be the 17th state to enact self-settled spendthrift trust legislation. This new law will allow for the creation of trusts in Michigan under which the settlor (trust-creator/ grantor/trustmaker) can name himself or herself, along...
The sixteen states that have passed asset protection trust law often compete with one another for business, each trying to woo individuals to use a trust company in that state to protect assets. An often-touted advantage of using one state over the others is that the...
In a previous blog, we discussed the “Bellinger” case and how the court concluded that the debtor’s actions were defensible. To briefly recap the facts, this was the matter in which Mr. Bellinger had made transfers of about $1.7 million to a Cook Islands trust after...
A case in the Southern District of Florida involved an individual who had guaranteed to a bank the repayment of about $5 million in debt obligations. The guarantor learned that the primary obligors on the debt were defaulting on the loan. Afterwards, the guarantor...