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The Seasonal Pruning Checklist: 8 Ways to Tidy Your Estate Plan Today By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi October 23, 2026 Wise fall gardening is all about balance: leaving vital cover for local wildlife and pollinators while clearing away what no longer serves the garden. The same holds true for your home legal files. Not every piece of paper needs to be shredded, but keeping outdated documents mixed in with current ones can cause real complications down the road. The Fall Equinox is a perfect time to review your legal documents—preserving what protects you and quietly retiring the rest.  Here are 8 places to focus your energies: 1 - Orphaned Retirement Accounts: Consolidate small 401(k)s or IRAs left behind from previous employers into a single rollover IRA so they are not forgotten or left subject to unclaimed property laws. 2 - Unused Bank & Savings Accounts: Close dormant checking or savings accounts scattered across multiple banks, and bring your day-to-day liquidity into one ...

National Dictionary Day: 5 Probate Words Every Future Executor Needs to Know By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi October 16, 2026 Today is National Dictionary Day ! Let's celebrate Noah Webster—the man who published the first American English dictionary in 1828 - in today's post. Webster believed that clear language was essential for a functioning society.  As an estate planning and probate attorney, I concur. Probate and estate planning are notorious for using antique legal jargon that leaves grieving family members scratching their heads. When you are named as an executor (or Personal Representative), opening court documents can feel like reading a foreign language. Here is a practical dictionary guide to 5 tricky legal words every future executor—and estate planner—needs to know. 1. Intestate /in-ˈtes-ˌtāt/ (adjective) The Legalese: Dying without a valid Last Will and Testament. Plain English: Leaving no roadmap behind. When someone dies "intestate," they don't lose t...

Don’t Let Outdated Beneficiary Forms Give Your Estate a Halloween Jump Scare By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi October 9, 2026 October brings pumpkin spice, crisp autumn air, and National Financial Planning Week. It’s the time of year when financial advisors across the country encourage us to review our investments, double-check our retirement goals, and make sure our hard-earned money is growing. Building wealth is an essential part of financial planning. But as a probate attorney, I see the other side of financial planning—what happens when those investments finally need to be transferred to the next generation.  And if there’s one thing that can deliver an absolute jump scare to your loved ones from beyond the grave, it’s an outdated beneficiary designation form. The Haunted Ghost of Beneficiary Forms Past When you open a 401(k), IRA, brokerage account, or life insurance policy, your financial planner almost always has you fill out a beneficiary designation form. These forms name Pay...

Workin’ 9 to 5: Why Estate Administration Shouldn’t Be a Family Business By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi October 2, 2026 When Dolly Parton sang "9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' / Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'...", she captured the universal grind of the workplace. But as recent headlines out of Nashville show, when estate administration turns into an unpaid, high-stakes job for family members, that "all takin' and no givin'" feeling can quickly ruin family relationships. Following Parton’s passing, a legal battle erupted between her corporate estate entity (She's Alive, LLC) and a family member who had long served as a key employee and operational manager. What followed was a wave of court filings, temporary restraining orders, and administrative friction that brought key estate work to a crawl. While few families manage a multi-million-dollar music catalog, this dispute highlights a critical lesson for every estat...

Candles, Cake, and Clarity: Why Your Birthday is the Best Date for an Estate Plan Review By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi September 25, 2026 Over the years, Oprah Winfrey gave us countless lessons on how to live intentionally, but one of her most practical pieces of advice centered on self-care: using your birthday as a recurring reminder for critical annual health checks. She championed the idea of scheduling annual mammograms and wellness exams right around your birthday, framing it not as a chore, but as an empowering gift of health to yourself. Yesterday, I celebrated my own birthday—a day full of warm wishes, calls from loved ones, and, of course, cake. And as I reflected on another trip around the sun, Oprah’s ritual came to mind. It turns out that a birthday is not just the perfect trigger for a physical check-up; it is also the ideal annual date for a quick legal health audit. We are already conditioned to handle annual check-ups around recurring milestones: physicals, dental clean...

Lessons from the Sidelines: What Cross Country Teaches Us About Estate Planning By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi September 18, 2026 O'Dark Thirty -- the phrase we parents of High School Cross Country runners refer to when our alarms ring at 5am on a Saturday morning.  From late August through the end of October my weekends kickoff on the sidelines of meets where my teenagers are doing their best to PR (personal record) in a 5K race.  I stand on the sideline with a cowbell in hand (a custom among the Vel Philips Memorial High School Girls XC team) cheering as a sea of runners surges past into the woods. My message from the spectator line is always the same: Dig deep, keep your pace, and do not leave anything on the course. Standing out on those courses week after week offers a great reminder of how long-distance running mirrors life—and specifically, how we care for our legal plans. A common misconception about estate planning is that it’s a 100-meter sprint: you push hard, draft t...