How to Give Real Property to a Loved One at Your Death Without Probate Court Involvement A home is often one of the most important assets that people own. Therefore, most people want to stay in their home until they die and then have a loved one rece…
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Who Needs an Estate Plan? If you are reading this, you need an estate plan. Why? The short answer is that everyone age 18 and older needs an estate plan. It does not matter whether you are old or young, have built up considerable wealth or are just e…
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Things You Can Do to Help Prove You Are Mentally Competent When Executing Your Estate Plan Although we would all like to believe that our family and loved ones will honor our wishes as expressed in our estate plan, contests are more common than you m…
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Whom Do You Trust to Make Your Financial Decisions? You wake up and check your investments over a cup of coffee. That tech stock you have been eyeing continues to trend upward, so you log in to your online brokerage account and buy some shares. Later…
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Spring Cleaning: Lists You Need to Get Your Affairs in Order Do You Know What You Own? Americans’ median household net worth (meaning half the households have more and half the households have less) is around $193,000, while the average net worth i…
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Four Steps to Stop Mail Addressed to a Deceased Person Once you have been appointed the executor or personal representative of a deceased loved one’s probate estate, or when you step in as the successor trustee of the loved one’s trust, one of th…
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Inside the Farm Succession Crisis: The Harsh Truth for Family Farms Family farms are at a turning point—and for many, the future is uncertain. At Wagner Oehler, Ltd., we work with farm families every day who are trying to navigate one of the most e…
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Incapacity Planning: The Other Part of Estate Planning Why You Need to Worry About Incapacity Planning Death is the elephant in the room when we talk about estate planning. We often use phrases like pass away and pass on to make our meetings feel mor…
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Handling a Loved One’s Debts After They Die Americans are, quite literally, getting buried in debt, with nearly half expecting to pass away with outstanding debts.[1] As a general rule, a person’s debts do not go away when they die. Some types of…
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Does Your Revocable Living Trust Reduce Your Federal Estate Tax Bill? Many believe that once they set up and fund a revocable living trust, property held in the trust will completely avoid federal estate taxes after they die. In reality, a living tru…
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