Planning for minor children is one of the concerns that causes many young families to think about estate planning. When creating an estate plan, thinking carefully about who would raise…

Massachusetts residents often own real estate in other states. A ski condo in Vermont, a rental in Florida, a family cabin in Maine, or a timeshare in Hawaii introduces a…

Massachusetts law gives a testator broad authority to choose beneficiaries, including the authority to choose to omit beneficiaries, but that authority is not absolute. Understanding what can and cannot be…

Retirement accounts are often one of the largest assets in a Massachusetts family’s estate, and they have transfer rules and nuances that differ from many other assets. A carefully drafted…

Most conversations about estate planning focus on what happens at death. A durable power of attorney (DPA) focuses on what happens while you are still alive, but unable to handle…

An estate plan should not be a stagnant set of documents that is filed away and never reviewed. It is a snapshot of the family, the assets, and the law…

Revocable trusts are living documents. Families create them, fund them, and then, as life changes, modify them. The two primary ways to modify a revocable trust are through amendments and…

The moment a family needs to act on an estate plan is usually the worst possible moment to need to go hunting for documents and accounts. A spouse or adult…

When someone dies without a valid will, the law calls that person “intestate.” The decedent’s assets will be distributed according to a statutory formula that may look very different from…

When families sit down to create a will, they naturally assume it controls all their assets. That assumption is understandable, but it misses one of the most consequential rules in…

When a trust holds assets for a beneficiary rather than distributing everything outright, the trustee has to decide when and how much to distribute. Discretionary distribution authority is one of…

When families create trusts as part of an estate plan, one of the most important protective features is often buried deep in the document’s boilerplate. A spendthrift clause restricts a…