Estate planning can feel overwhelming, but failing to plan can leave your loved ones facing a costly, time-consuming legal ...

Estate planning professionals and families face significant challenges when dividing tangible personal property—artwork, jewelry, family heirlooms, and collectibles—among multiple heirs. Traditional ...

As people build savings over time, their financial priorities often change. What begins as a focus on saving and investing ...

John Madden would be proud. When I am explaining the difference between probate and nonprobate assets to clients and seminar attendees, I usually produce a diagram that is worthy of the most elaborate ...

Probate is a legal procedure through which a deceased individual's estate is administered and distributed. The probate process commences when the deceased individual's representative, known as the ...

Tangible personal property – that is, property (other than land or buildings) that you can see or touch – is a special asset class in many estates. A client’s tangibles include their jewelry, clothing ...

Christy Bieber has a JD from UCLA School of Law and began her career as a college instructor and textbook author. She has been writing full time for over a decade with a focus on making financial and ...

A decedent's gross estate includes most assets and property they owned or had an interest in at death, used to calculate estate taxes. Some assets, however, may be excluded, affecting the estate's ...