Once you have completed your estate plan with your attorney, should you have a family meeting? In most cases, it is probably a good idea talk with the persons you have appointed in the various roles. You should have appointed a financial agent, a medical agent, an executor for a Will, and possibly guardians [...]
If you are over 65, you can choose to defer paying your property taxes on your homestead. This almost sounds too good to be true, but realize, it is a deferral of taxes, not a forgiveness of them. However, if we could defer all of our taxes until we die that would be a dream. [...]
Spring is in the air, so what is that foul odor? Could it be the stench coming from your property tax reappraisal? It is true that death and taxes are inevitable, but property taxes are particularly inescapable. Somehow, someway, somebody is going to pay the property taxes on your house or other real estate. Property [...]
I know, tax stuff is boring, unless you are having to pay taxes you shouldn’t. So, today, I’m going to address a great tax benefit of property passing through estates, and why you don’t want to lose that benefit. We are going to talk about the “step up basis” rules. A taxpayer's basis is usually [...]
Regardless of whether you use Revocable Living Trusts, Wills, and Powers of Attorney to accomplish your estate planning, a key decision is who to trust to make your financial and medical decisions. The person who makes your medical decisions is your medical power of attorney. The person who makes your financial decisions is either your [...]
Dual income couples often keep their finances separate. Separate bank accounts, separate investment accounts, separately titled cars, and almost anything else other than the homestead. Are these separately-titled properties separate property of the respective spouses? The hallmark rule of community property is that the character of the property (whether it is community or separate) is [...]
Congress has actually passed an infrastructure Act -- The Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act “IIJA” and is working on a second spending bill titled the Build Back Better Act (“BBBA”), passed by the House and pending in the Senate. It is hard to tell whose goose is getting fat and whose turkey is getting [...]
Britney Spears, as almost everyone knows, had been under “conservatorship” in California. What does that mean? Do not try to make me understand California “law”, but if Britney was a Texan, we wouldn’t call it conservatorship. We would call it guardianship, and Ms. Spears would likely never have had a guardian for her as an [...]
House and Senate Democrats are working with the Biden administration to pass legislation to fund their infrastructure initiatives, including wide-ranging social programs, and tax legislation to pay for those programs, at least in part. The House Ways and Means Committee released their tax proposals on September 13 and they have wide-ranging effects on high income [...]
In Texas, guardianship is the legal process where one person is granted legal control over another person's affairs. There are broadly two types of guardianships: guardianship of the person and guardianship of the estate. A guardianship of the person is to be granted control over the decision-making authority of another, usually to make medical, residential, [...]