The recent passing of television star Florence Henderson, known for her portrayal of the mother “Carol Brady” on “The Brady Bunch ,” offers us a chance to talk to our clients in blended families about the importance of updating estate planning documents whenever someone is recently divorced or remarried.<\/p>\n
The reason for Carol Brady’s first marriage ending was never addressed during the original series, which ran from 1969-1974. Show creator Sherwood Schwartz reportedly wanted Carol to be a divorced mother of three girls, but the network executives felt having a divorced mother as a lead character was too risqu\u00e9 for audiences.<\/p>\n
But divorce definitely<\/strong> needs to be talked about in estate planning.<\/p>\n “The Brady Bunch ” advanced the portrayal of the “typical” American family in entertainment. Carol and Mike Brady headed the first blended family featured on television. They were even the first married couple shown sharing the same bed! Overall, it was quite the progressive show considering the period.<\/p>\n Divorcing or divorced clients often become focused on the immediate problem of dividing assets, and forget about estate plans that were made during the marriage. These plans address more than just who receives or controls your assets in the event of a debilitating illness or death.<\/p>\n It’s our job to help you and your loved ones avoid future conflict, heartache, and messy financial wrangling down the line. We recommend the following updates for anyone who is divorcing.<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Wills<\/strong> 2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Beneficiary Designations<\/strong> 3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Health Care Power of Attorney and Advanced Care Directives<\/strong> 4.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Financial Power of Attorney<\/strong> 5.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Estate Planners<\/strong> 6.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Qualified Domestic Relations Order<\/strong> Divorce is a difficult decision, but you can minimize the long-term effects by handling these important estate planning issues right away. We encourage you to tackle these issues head-on, and avoid costly and painful legal problems for your loved ones down the line.<\/p>\n We’re pretty sure Carol and Mike Brady would have discussed these sorts of planning issues at their big family table, with Alice the housekeeper throwing in her advice as well. Curious thing… Mike was an architect, but he couldn’t design a house with more than one bathroom shared by those six kids?<\/p>\n We hope this information is useful to you. If you have a specific case or a question, please don’t hesitate to call our office for an appointment.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent passing of television star Florence Henderson, known for her portrayal of the mother “Carol Brady” on “The Brady Bunch ,” offers us a chance to talk to our clients in blended families about the importance of updating estate planning documents whenever someone is recently divorced or remarried. The reason for Carol Brady’s first… Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-estate-planning"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estatetrustlawyer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWills are an obvious place to begin. Make sure these important legal documents are updated and that your loved ones know where to locate them.<\/p>\n
\nYou should also update the beneficiary designations for life insurance policies and retirement funds. This is an often overlooked but crucial<\/u><\/em> change to be made during divorce.<\/p>\n
\nThere are also medical concerns to address. You will want to change your health care power of attorney documents naming who will handle medical decisions and advocate on your behalf, in the event that you are incapacitated and unable to express your wishes. Do you want your ex-spouse making those decisions?\u00a0 In addition, health care advanced directives, commonly called living wills, should be updated to reflect this change as well, to reflect your designees of choice.<\/p>\n
\nIn addition, a new designation should be made for the durable financial power of attorney, so the correct person has the authority to handle money matters when you are unable to do so for yourself. Again, do you want you “ex” handling your financial affairs?<\/p>\n
\nYou may need to change your estate planning attorney<\/a>. Married couples generally work together with the same attorney, but when divorcing, you might be best suited to find other attorney on your own so as to avoid a conflict of interest. Contact our office if you have a question about a potential conflict of interest.<\/p>\n
\nMany people may choose to allow ex-spouses rights to a portion of funds as part of the divorce settlement. You should file a Qualified Domestic Relations Order to designate exactly what those ex-spouses are entitled to and how it should be distributed. This will spell out your wishes clearly and help to alleviate disagreements and legal entanglements in the future.<\/p>\n