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Yesterday and today I have been attending the annual CLEW Tax Law update in Madison.  A day and a half packed with tax concepts, code citations, and esoteric terms.  For the registration fee I walk away with the following three pearls of wisdom, which anyone can benefit from in the world of estate planning and probate: File things on time, and avoid creating a questionable issue the court will have to decided (i.e. is priority mail the same as certified mail; the answer in the eyes of Wisconsin's Department of Revenue is no); Read the entire trust (or insert the name of any legal document; will, contract, form, etc.); and Keep it simple -- the most elegant solution to problems does not require brilliance, but rather appreciation by the government employees reading the legal forms created. Nothing profound.  Concepts available to all, not just those with a multitude of letters after their name.  Common sense, but often overlooked.  I am thankful for the w...

The headline Dead Woman's Cat Gets Stay of Execution caught my attention last week as I read the local paper.  Apparently an Illinois women wrote a will in 1988 that contained the clause "any cats owned at the time of her death be euthanized in a painless and peaceful manner."  The bank executing her will hesitated at such a clause, and through its lawyers, petition the court to ignore the request.  A Cook County probate court set aside the clauses, stating it would violate public policy.  And that is how Boots, an 11 year-old cat, got another chance at life.  Apparently these types of requests are not unheard of, as the article sites several other clauses that were also struck down by a court as being against public policy. Image Credit:  Taken by author, Melinda Gustafson Gervasi -- featured is Reilly, her 13 year old cat.

It was late on a Wednesday afternoon. My client, her daughter, son-in-law, two bank employees serving as witnesses, and myself all gathered around a desk. Pen in hand, the 90 year old women who had hired me to update her estate plan applied ink to paper. The room was quite except for the swish of flipping pages. As she signed the last line she sat back, and said with a chuckle, "I feel like I'm going off to jail". The room erupted into laughter -- no one had offered that comment before. But it certainly captured the importance of the signing meeting. I never let my clients sign their papers without me. Most people are concerned with the wording in documents, which is of course important. But most don't give a second thought to whether the papers are signed properly. And from what I've read, most documents fail not because of poor wording, but because they were not signed properly. So, if you are are doing your own estate planning documents, make sure that ...

The U.S. Supreme Court said in an opinion issued January 26, 2009, (Kari Ellen Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan, et al., No. 07-636, U.S. Sup .) that a plan administrator correctly ignored a divorce decree and distributed the assets to the person named on the beneficiary form....the decedant's ex-wife. The case involved the daughter of the decedent, who sued her mother because the mother was listed as the sole beneficiary of the father's 401k account. Even though he had divorced the mother, the mother's name was never removed from the beneficiary form. The daughter claimed that her mother waived her right to the account balance by the terms of the divorce decree, however, the US Supreme Court disagreed. As I always tell my clients, a will does not trump a beneficiary form. The best practice is to review those forms regularly, making sure they reflect your wishes and are up to date.