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Want a Stellar Estate Plan?  Have These 4 Conversations!  September 23, 2024 By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi Image by M. Gustafson Gervasi, 2024 September is National Preparedness Month , which aims to remind the general public about the importance of being ready for disaster and emergencies.  In 2024 there is a specific theme, conversation.  The title “ Start the Conversation ”, is a campaign that nudges the public past its resistance about addressing potential risks and dangers. It encourages the public to have regular talks with loved ones about how to handle emergencies. While the focus of National Preparedness Month is on natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes, the motivation fits well in my focus area – estate planning and probate. Estate planning is the act of creating documents that state who should act if you are alive but too sick to make decisions about our health care as well as finances, as well as, who will handle your final affairs.  Moreov...

What's More Important Than an Estate Plan?  The Act of Planning! By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi September 16, 2024 OMG! Austin, in AUGUST! Are you both nuts???? My teenage son scoffed. It will be hotter than Hades, this is crazy! Yelped my soon-to-be high school daughter.  And so began our family discussion of driving from Madison, Wisconsin to Austin, Texas. In August! It was early summer, and my husband and I had decided to chip away at our goal of taking our children to all 50 states. By Fall they would both be in high school.  The window for family vacations was narrowing. So I cooked up a route that would take us to 5 Presidential Libraries as well as towns with friends and family.   My son, the elder of the two kids, realized this was not negotiable. We were going.  He is my realist and commented to his sister “well, they’ve made up their minds, we might as well look up good places to eat along the way!”  And so it began; a 2500 mile road trip. ...

Lesson From Fisk, Season 2: Work Out Your Wishes Before Meeting the Attorney September 9, 2024 By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi Season Two of the Australian comedy show Fisk ends with an all too frequent storyline -- the married couple that erupts into an argument as the attorney asks delicate questions about what happens when you die. In this episode Helen is working with a couple where there is a significant age difference, a baby from the union, and adult children from his prior relationship. As Helen asks questions the wife grows increasingly upset, objecting to the very notion that she might die.  It is clear she is at the meeting to prepare for her older husband to die. She goes beyond rattled by the mortality question into an entirely new level of upset, turning to social media and gottcha TV to turn her anger towards her attorney and away from the reality that death does not discriminate in favor of the young.  My take-away from this episode is the importance for couples...

Lesson From Fisk, Season 2: Get The Name Correct September 2, 2024 By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi Episode 5 in Season Two of the Australian comedy Fisk takes the viewer on a tour of the probate landscape when a will mentions a nonprofit that no longer exists.  The show opens with Helen attempting to find the Australian Cat Welfare League.  Through a conference call with an American nonprofit of a similar name, she learns that in the 1970s the American nonprofit forced an Australian nonprofit with the same name to change its name.  However, a recently deceased client who did a will in early 1972 named the Australian nonprofit prior to the name change.  Now Helen has to sort out where to direct the $10 million dollar bequest.  Quirky adventures follow, but in the end (spoiler alert) she is able to deliver a huge check to support Australian cats in need.  Maybe it is my fondness for cats (we have four of them in our family home) or my interest in everyday peopl...