But fewer people are writing letters home these days. Instead, they post updates on Facebook. And their wedding, baby and vacation photos are more likely to be hung in online galleries like Flickr, or again on Facebook.

But who receives and preserves these online mementoes — digital assets — when we die?

New Laws under Consideration

A recent article on The Huffington Post explored this question and explained proposed laws in two states that could force Facebook and other social networks to hand over control of a deceased user’s account if the person resided in that state.

Nebraska and Oklahoma have bills under consideration, and the Oregon State Bar Association has formed a committee to explore the matter and propose legislation, according to the article.

One mother in Oregon underwent a two-year lawsuit with Facebook in order to obtain access to her deceased son’s account. In the end, Facebook granted her 10 months of access before removing her son’s page.

In Memoriam

Currently, when Facebook receives confirmation that a user has died, the account holder’s page is placed “in memoriam” for friends and loved ones to make posts in remembrance. Certain information is removed and the page is restricted to the user’s “Facebook friends” only.

Facebook will provide the estate of a deceased user with a download of the account data “if prior consent is obtained from or decreed by the deceased or mandated by law.” If a close relative requests that the decedent’s account be removed, Facebook will do so.

Include Digital Assets in Estate Plan

As an advisor, you can help clients understand how important this issue is for their families. One idea is to complete a list of social networks, photo galleries, blogs and email accounts, along with passwords and instructions for when someone dies or becomes incapacitated.

Many estate planning lawyers provide such services as part of their clients’ estate plan. Keeping that list updated  when passwords change is crucial.

At last count, over 750 million people use Facebook. The status updates, photos and notes in their accounts will one day be incredibly precious to their loved ones. Help your clients preserve such memories for future generations.

I hope this article has helped you. As always, if you have a specific concern or questions, please contact our office.

There are three major things to consider when estate planning during or after a divorce:

1. Guardianship: According to the law, if you pass away guardianship passes to your child’s other biological parent; this is the case even if you had full custody (unless it is determined that the surviving parent is unfit). This is something to keep in mind when you are nominating guardians. If you and your ex can sit down and discuss guardians together and agree on a few alternates it will make everyone (including your child) feel more secure about the future.

2. Financial Inheritance: Although many divorced couples may feel comfortable with their ex as guardian, most are dead set against their ex having any control over their finances. How then can you leave your estate for the benefit of your child without leaving it in the hands of your ex? The solution is to put your child’s inheritance in trust until they come of age, with a person you know and trust acting as trustee. Your trustee will have the responsibility to keep and maintain the trust, giving distributions to the guardian for the benefit of your child. Keep in mind that your trustee and guardian will have to work together quite often, if you and your ex can agree on someone with whom you both are comfortable it will make the process much easier on your trustee, your ex, and your child.

3. Remarriage: When you marry there is an inevitable mingling of finances, and this is no different for a second or third marriage. However, if you don’t make provisions for your children in your estate plan your assets will end up going entirely to your new spouse when you die, leaving your child(ren) out in the cold. This can be easily addressed in your estate plan (or your ex’s estate plan, if he or she is the one getting remarried) as long as you talk to your attorney and take action now, before it’s too late.

If you are going through or have gone through a divorce please call our office and let us help.

Here are a few tips to get you started on the process.  Each trust will be different, but the following suggestions are a foundation to begin funding just about every revocable trust:

Bank Accounts: For this you will need your Certification of Trust.  This is the document your bank will require to put your account(s) in the name of your trust.  With this document it’s a quick matter to stop by the bank some afternoon and ask them to make your trust the owner of your accounts.  NOTE: You should NOT be required to change the name on your checks or bank cards!

Real Property: Check your records to make sure your home is in the name of your trust.  Even if you know you transferred your home into your revocable trust, refinancing will often result in your home being taken out of it.  If your home is not owned by the trust, contact your attorney to have it put back in.

Stocks and Investments: Contact your broker, financial advisor, or transfer agent to change the title of the investment accounts to the name of the trust.  For stocks owned outside of an investment account, ask for the certificate to be re-issued in the name of your trust.

Personal Property: Tangible personal property such as antiques or artwork often cannot be titled in the name of a trust.  But you can tell your attorney you’d like to sign an Assignment of Personal Property, sometimes called a Comprehensive Transfer Document.  This states your intention to hold all of your tangible property in the name of, and for the benefit of, your revocable trust.

Don’t let your trust turn into an empty shell.  The funding process is much easier than you think.  Once you get started you’ll gather momentum quickly.  The coordination of retirement accounts with trusts, such as IRAs or 401(k)s, is a very complex issue, and should not be attempted without the help of a lawyer due to the possible inadvertent tax consequences and penalties.  A full discussion of this type of account is beyond the scope of this article.

There are a number of issues that can be brought to the surface when adult children or grandchildren try to share a family property. “One big friction point in such an arrangement is how to pay the costs involved in maintaining a home—including taxes, insurance, utility bills.” But that’s only the beginning. “Other factors to consider: How the family gets along, where they live, what happens when the children who inherit a home get married and who is going to use the property.”

Fortunately, this is one family fight that can be prevented (or at least softened) by a little bit of forethought and planning. One of the first suggestions in the WSJ article is to leave family property to the next generation in a trust funded by life insurance. “That way, a professional trustee can manage the property, and the insurance proceeds can cover expenses.” A Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT) or a Dynasty Trust can both be perfect for this purpose.

Another beneficial safeguard is to form a Limited Liability Company (LLC) for the property. An LLC can help establish an operating agreement to “cover rights of use and property management,” as well as shield heirs from estate taxes.

Having a good plan in place for your family vacation home can be the determining factor which allows the property to continue to serve as a place where your entire family can come together, to create happy memories that will last a lifetime.

The author writes of his father—chronically ill, stroke survivor, suffering from mild but advancing dementia—who is currently staying in a nursing home, “where they’ve put him on a diet of pureed foods and thickened liquids, but he often refuses to eat, demanding to be taken home and fed the home cooking he’s always loved. It’s hard to tell him that may never happen, and that his options are increasingly grim. If my dad can’t eat, a feeding tube will be his only choice. Other than giving up the fight.”

The family is now struggling to decide if a feeding tube is the right course of action, what their father would (or does) want, and how involved he should be in the decision considering his current state of mental health. “We worry… that with mild but advancing dementia, my father won’t be able to fully comprehend the implications of being fed through a tube implanted in his gut. And if he declines it, is he competent to make that decision?” These are the heart-breaking decisions that can leave loved ones asking themselves for years after, “Did we do the right thing?”

We often shy away from talking about these issues with our family members and loved ones. We think that they are too sad, too depressing, or too far into the future to worry about yet.  The only thing that can make these decisions even the tiniest bit easier, however, is knowing for certain what your loved one would want; and the only way to know for certain is to talk about your feelings with your family, and to put your wishes in writing with a living will or healthcare directive. Our office can help you do this.

More often than not the best that can be hoped for in a situation like the one discussed above is that some measure of peace is attained. We wish this for the author of the article and his family, and we wish this for any of our readers involved in similarly difficult and painful circumstances.

The reason for this is that more and more parents are coming to realize that there is a learning curve associated with handling large sums of money, and dropping a large inheritance in your child’s lap may be giving he or she more than they can reasonably handle all at once, essentially setting your child up for failure. “Premature distributions to heirs can have the same effect as the jackpot has on lottery winners… The money becomes a burden, and your child may not fully develop into the adult you hope to raise.”

Fortunately, if you don’t want to bequeath a fortune to your children all at once, you have a number of options for ensuring your children are provided for and eventually receive the inheritance you intend for them. As mentioned in the Barron’s article, some of the most popular strategies include passing an inheritance through either a revocable or an irrevocable trust. A trust allows a parent to transfer assets to their children while still retaining control of when and how the assets will be distributed. Of these two options, a revocable trust can provide more flexibility, while an irrevocable trust can provide more asset protection, although both kinds of trusts provide a measure of each. You will want to discuss with your estate planning attorney which option will work best for your family.

With either trust option parents can choose to simply keep the inheritance in trust until the child reaches a certain age, or distribute funds slowly over the course of time, to better acquaint the recipient with the responsibilities of wealth. However you choose to structure your estate plan, our firm can help you accomplish your goals for yourself and for your children.

It’s not as unusual as you may think for someone to ask “How do I make sure my money won’t go to my family when I die?” The answer to this question is actually very easy—if you’ve had the foresight to create some kind of estate plan, that is. Without any kind of estate planning (a will or a trust, for example) the law automatically distributes your estate to your closest living relatives upon your death. But the simple act of creating a will or a trust can prevent this automatic distribution from happening.

A will or a trust can be as basic or as complex as you choose. Simply naming the people or organizations of your choice as your heirs is often enough to ensure that your wishes are followed, but if you are worried about relatives who may contest your wishes you may want to ask your attorney about stronger measures, such as including a disinheritance clause or a no-contest clause in your will or trust. This can be as simple as including a single sentence stating “I have specifically chosen not to provide for my brother John.”

Although it can be as simple as this, in many cases this simple sentence may not be enough.  There are complex legal laws regarding disinheritance.  The laws require specific wording and specific provisions included in your will or trust to make it legally binding in a court of law.  If you have questions about this procedure, you need to contact a legal specialist to make sure that is properly worded and that all required provisions are included.

We understand that not all families are the same, and not all people will want their wealth distributed in the usual manner. If you have a unique family situation, or unusual circumstances or requests, please don’t hesitate to contact our office. We can help.

1. Your Advance Health Care Directive or Living Will. If you have already created a health care directive or living will we strongly suggest you give your primary care physician a copy of the document. It can be even more helpful to briefly discuss the document with your doctor and have him or her sign off on it, if possible. This prevents any unwelcome surprises, should an accident occur.

2. Your wishes for medical treatment if you are incapacitated. Part of creating an Advance Health Care Directive is outlining your wishes for medical treatment if you are incapacitated. This is more than just making a decision about a DNR (discussed in item #5), this also includes what medications or treatments you would like to receive and under what circumstances, it includes where you would like to receive long-term treatment if necessary, and it includes who you would like to be involved in medical decision-making (from your spouse, to your parents, to your favorite doctor or doctors.)

3. Your health care agent. This is the person who will be making medical decisions for you if you are unable to make them for yourself. We are not suggesting you bring your chosen agent in to meet your doctor, but briefly telling your doctor who the person is (your spouse, your brother, your daughter) and why you chose them can make all the difference.

4. Your HIPAA Authorization. This is the document that gives medical staff permission to share information about your health status with certain people. You can sign a generic HIPAA Authorization with your attorney as part of your estate plan, but it is likely that your physician and your local hospital will have their own forms to be signed. Ask your doctor how to ensure that the right people are getting the right information in case of emergency.

5. The inclusion (or lack) of a DNR statement in your medical file. We always hope that this will never be necessary, but we all learned our lesson from the Terri Shiavo case and know that it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your end-of-life wishes. Talk to your doctor about under what circumstances you would or wouldn’t want life-saving treatment, and the best way to include these wishes in your health care directive AND in your medical file.

That article covers eight estate planning components, beginning with a will and a living trust and ending with long term care insurance and disability insurance. All of these components are extremely useful (and in some cases absolutely necessary) and we highly recommend reading through the entire article.  We would also suggest that there are three more documents that an entrepreneur should consider to help preserve business and wealth for future generations.

Family Limited Partnership (FLP): A Family Limited Partnership is an asset protection tool which allows parents to take business assets out of their taxable estate and transfer the value of that asset to their children while still remaining in control of the business.

Buy-Sell Agreement: A buy-sell agreement is a formal plan or contract between business partners establishing what will happen to the business should one of the partners die. This document specifies whether a partner may or may not buy your ownership shares for your heirs and for what price, or whether you want to block certain family members or individuals from having any ownership share in the business.

Succession Plan: A succession plan should be a key element in any business plan, but especially for small or family businesses. A succession plan is exactly what it sounds like, a formal plan outlining your wishes for passing your business on to your successors. You may design a succession plan to facilitate your retirement, or to provide a smooth transition in the event of your death. In any case, a succession plan is essential for any business owner.

Don’t leave your business—or your family—out in the cold. Take the necessary steps to protect them both in the event of your death with a well-designed estate plan.

Consider for a moment which items have meaning for you. What will happen to these items when you’re gone? The first things that come to mind are often family heirlooms: Your grandmother’s china, the engagement ring your father gave your mother; but what about items of significance to you in particular—a home library with antique books, a classical guitar collection, your personal inventory of artwork, or perhaps a valuable coin or stamp collection.

All too often these items of personal value are given only a vague mention as part of “the estate.” These personal items can end up either given away for a pittance at a yard sale, or they may cost hundreds of dollars in legal fees when siblings fight over them. Siblings often end up fighting and disowning each other over a disagreement about small items of personal value from mom or dad.

Luckily, you don’t have to leave the distribution of these items to chance. Our firm will work with you to create an estate plan that will not only pass your financial assets to your heirs, but also your beloved personal items as well.  Perhaps you’d like to leave that home library to your literary niece along with a modest sum to help her buy bookshelves. Your classical guitar collection might be most appreciated by your local music center, along with a financial donation to put toward a musical scholarship program.

Artwork, coin collections, stamp collections—these “small” items can be the Achilles’ heel of an estate plan if not given the consideration they deserve; but it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right planning you can leave your cherished personal items in the hands of appreciative people who will care for them. Contact our office today and let us help you provide for the people—and things—you love most.