The year is nearly half over and it’s been a rollercoaster. A fluctuating market, rising interest rates, chaos and scandal in Washington. Here on the homefront, it’s summer, and that means baseball. But for loyal A’s and Giants fans, it seems like our favorite teams just can’t catch a break....
There are many things to keep in mind as you plan the distribution of your assets among your heirs for your Living Trust. But for those in their second or third marriages, replacing the name of the former spouse with that of the new one on all assets, including life...
Visitors to California Document Preparers’ website will notice a newly designed site that we launched last week. We rolled out our new site with neither a whimper nor a bang—a soft opening, if you will, because we wanted to make sure that everything was working smoothly. No splashy announcement or Facebook...
One of our clients created her Living Trust some 12 years ago, and updating her Trust was a 2016 New Year’s resolution. The update was long overdue; since its creation, she’s invested in an IRA, a life insurance policy and some other brokerage accounts. She was going to wait until she...
This week we’re featuring a couple, Scott and Callista, who came in to our Oakland office initially to transfer title on several rather sizeable properties. Scott wanted to add his wife’s name to the title, making them co-owners; this is a fairly simple procedure, one that we can generally execute...
A client recently came in to our Walnut Creek office to prepare her Living Trust. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and while both she and her doctors were optimistic about her long-term prognosis, the disease created a sense of urgency, causing her to think about her life, her priorities...
Probate, as we tell our clients, is easy to avoid by creating a Living Trust, making sure that it’s properly funded with your assets and updated with significant investments and life events. When you die without a Trust, your estate falls into court-appointed Probate, and it’s always a costly, lengthy...
A couple, John and Joan, came into our Walnut Creek office to change the vesting on a deed. Vesting is the manner in which you hold title to your real estate as reflected on your deed. Proper vesting is required every time you file a deed, and includes Sole Ownership, Joint...
We assist a lot of our clients with their Living Trusts. Many people don’t realize it’s not enough to create one—it has to be funded—and just as important—updated when there are important life events. One recent client was referred to us by her realtor—she is trying to sell her property,...
A newly married couple came in to our Walnut Creek office to update their deed. Before their marriage, they had bought their home together as a single man and woman. When they married, the wife took her husband’s last name, but the name on the deed still reflected her maiden...
Real estate titles can be tricky indeed, as Stan learned after waiting for 16 years after his divorce to remove his ex-wife from the ownership records of his home and then adding his new wife to the deed 14 years after his re-marriage. Oh...
There were so many estate planning mistakes made in the scenario I wrote about in my last posting. First of all, it’s probably not wise to make an integral part of your planning the expectation that a child will always survive his or her parent. Sure, it’s a likely expectation,...
