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Taxation & Estate Planning

Death and Taxes Blog

Commentary on estate planning, estate administration, and real estate issues from a Chicago-area attorney.
By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

Post Frequency: 2/day

Last Entry: May 07, 2013 at 12:00:50

Step-Siblings, Half-Siblings, and Heirship

Posted on October 02, 2008
For determining heirship in Illinois, it's important to understand the difference between step-relations and half-relations. A step-sibling isn't really a sibling or a blood relation at all. It's the child of two people, one of whom then marries one of your parents...

Cutting Off Fights Over Your Estate

Posted on October 01, 2008
Is there a parent alive who WANTS his children to fight over his estate? I hope not. But what can you do to avoid fighting? Well, one thing you can do is to disclose your plans, by handing out copies of your estate planning documents to your children...

A Rant

Posted on October 01, 2008
Can I tell you what I'm tired of right now? I'm tired of getting calls from old media folks -- Martindale, West, Thompson, what have you -- telling me that I should pay a bunch of money so that they can teach me how to compete on the internet. Let me tell you something, guys -- I'm already competing on the internet...

Heir Property and The Gridlock Economy

Posted on September 25, 2008
I wrote recently about the issue of "heir property" here. Next week I start my second business school class, Advanced Economic Analysis with Professor Kevin Murphy. This is supposed to be a VERY intense class, so during my month break between quarters, I've been reading all of the economics information I can get my hands on (which includes trying to educate myself about our current financial crisis)...

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Client Work Breakdown

Posted on September 24, 2008
It's always hard for a lawyer to figure out what to call him/herself. What type of lawyer am I? Well, I'm the type of lawyer who currently has 33 active client files, in the following areas: Estate Administration/Probate/Trust Administration: 18 (plus 3 "inactive" client files), or 54...

Trusts, Corporate Fiduciaries, and the Bailout

Posted on September 23, 2008
This is a pretty interesting Wall Street Journal article about the ramifications of the bailout and Great Depression 2.0 for individuals with trust accounts at affected institutions. I?m less interested in how trust assets are being or should be invested in this market (very carefully? no freaking duh) than I am in the issue of what happens if your corporate trustee folds, or is bought out...

Wills and Trusts With Incorrect Family Information

Posted on September 22, 2008
Here?s a problem that I?ve encountered a couple of times recently: people who intentionally misstate their family situation in their estate planning documents. In both cases, the testator did not list all of his or her children in the section of the Will usually entitled ?My Family...

Tax Plan Charts and Graphs

Posted on September 18, 2008
Chartjunk gives us some nice visual representations of the tax proposals of Senators McCain and Obama, here.

2008 Year-End Gifting Made Easy

Posted on September 17, 2008
One of my most well-received posts was this one, on "year-end gifting made easy." Evidently the Federal Taxes Weekly Alert has calculated that the gift tax annual exclusion will go from $12,000 (right now) to $13,000 in 2009. Based on this, it seems like time for an update: Next year the annual gift tax exclusion will increase from $12,000 to $13,000...

Stock Certificates and Probate

Posted on September 16, 2008
One of the things that I emphasize as an estate planner is "making things easy" for the people who will ultimately handle your estate, by getting yourself organized. That saves them a lot of aggravation, and will also save your estate a fair amount of money, as no one will need to pay an attorney $200+ per hour to figure out how many bank accounts you had, or whether you executed a Will...

Probate Checklist

Posted on September 15, 2008
One of my very long-range projects is creating a comprehensive, soup-to-nuts checklist for Illinois probate. This may be a stand-alone website with just my own content, or I may set it up as a wiki. Anyway, here is the rough outline of things I hope to cover, which can serve as a very rough checklist for Illinois probates: 1...

Powers of Attorney: Do You Want to Act as Agent?

Posted on September 11, 2008
My prediction is that, as more and more baby boomers become fiduciaries for their parents, we're going to get a lot more articles like the very good one by Helen W. Gunnarsson in last month's Illinois Bar Journal (available for members here). Powers of attorney were created in response to a very real problem: if you are disabled, who can make decisions for you? The "old school" way to proceed was with a guardianship -- that's very expensive and very time-consuming...

Jurisdiction in Probate

Posted on September 10, 2008
I remember very little about my law school jurisdiction class (other than the fact that my professor, who looked like a Teutonic version of Queen lead singer Freddy Mercury, wore the world's tightest jeans). But jurisdictional questions do arise in the probate context...

More on Terminating Independent Administration

Posted on September 09, 2008
I spoke about frustrations with the termination of independent administration here. A few follow-up points: 1. In the statute, a distinction is made between Wills that direct independent administration, and those that don't. If the Will directs independent administration, then supervised administration will only be allowed "if the court finds there is good cause...

Agents and Reasonable Compensation

Posted on September 08, 2008
The August 2008 edition of the Illinois Bar Journal features a discussion about reasonable compensation under a power of attorney -- here is the table of contents (I think you need to be a member to read the article). My previous post about the issue (here) is mentioned in the article.

Slayer Statute Applicable To Minors?

Posted on September 05, 2008
Here's an interesting one: Linda Damm was killed by her daughter's boyfriend, Bryan Grove. Her daughter, Tess, was 15 when she evidently helped to "plan and facilitate" her mother's murder. The question is whether Colorado's so-called "slayer statute" applies to prevent Tess Damm (a minor) from inheriting from her mother's estate...

Crazy Article Round-up

Posted on September 04, 2008
Here's a double dose of crazy for your reading pleasure: 1. Probate and Switch, by Lou Ann Anderson. My favorite part: "Attorney misconduct is rarely punished so our country is full of attorneys who will bend or break rules. These 'bottom feeders' are the vanguard flag carriers emblematic of why the general public has such disdain for the legal profession...

How to File a Will in Cook County

Posted on September 02, 2008
I've published a legal guide over at www.avvo.com on "How to File a Will in Cook County." It's available here.

For Sale: www.probateblog.com

Posted on August 30, 2008
Sorry for the shameless sales pitch, but I own the domain name www.probateblog.com. If anyone is interested in purchasing it, I've placed it for sale at www.tdnam.com. Initial bidding is $200, and there's no reserve (I will take the highest bidder as of the end of the auction, on Friday, September 5th)...

Coming Soon: Supreme Courtship

Posted on August 29, 2008
Next week I'm hoping to post my review of Christopher Buckley's new novel, Supreme Courtship. I recently mentioned Mr. Buckley's novel Boomsday in this blog, and his publisher was nice enough to send me an advance copy of his new work, which will be released September 3rd...

Mary Ellen Bendtsen Will Contest

Posted on August 28, 2008
This article tells the pretty interesting story of a Will contest. Some of the facts are typical of these types of cases -- a Will signed when the testator may or may not be competent, and charges of undue influence. But there are also some twists (the testator is a former model, the main asset is a crumbling mansion in Dallas)...

African Americans and Heir Property

Posted on August 27, 2008
"Heir property" is a concept that's new to me -- it's a way of holding property that is somewhat common about African American farmers in the rural south. Basically, the idea is that property is held "by the family." Perhaps, in the distant past, a property was owned by one individual...

Senator Clinton in Probate Court?

Posted on June 12, 2008
I've turned into a political junkie during this election cycle, but one thing I missed -- linked to recently in a post-mortem about sexism and Senator Clinton's loss to Senator Obama -- was this, from January. Evidently there's a television show called "Morning Joe," and on it someone named Mike Barnicle (the Sailor?) said of Senator Clinton: "...

Conflicts of Interest and Referrals

Posted on June 12, 2008
Probably the two biggest areas for potential conflicts of interest in estate planning are: 1. Where the estate planner represents husband and wife (I discussed this here); and 2. Where the estate planner represents multiple generations of the same family (I discussed this here)...

Wills and Provisions That Fail

Posted on June 10, 2008
I didn't start my legal career doing much estate planning; for the most part, I was a probate attorney, handling Wills that had "matured" into deceased estates. I think that's a helpful experience, as you quickly figure out from a practical perspective the difference between good provisions and provisions that fail...

Tangible Personal Property and edivvyup.com

Posted on June 06, 2008
One of the biggest little problems in probate is how to deal with tangible personal property -- furniture, clothing, furnishings, etc. left by the decedent. Most Wills leave such property "in shares of substantially equal value" to decedents -- that language recognizes that you can't divide tangible personal property in equal shares the way you divide cash equally...

Bill Murray's Prenup -- with Extra Top 5 List!

Posted on June 05, 2008
Bill Murray and his wife are getting divorced. Bill Murray and his wife signed a prenup before their 1997. If you are familiar with prenups, you know what comes next: Bill Murray's wife is challenging the validity of the prenup. Here are the details, with a copy of said prenup...

Foreign Wills

Posted on June 04, 2008
The procedure for admitting to probate a Will executed in Illinois, by an Illinois resident, is pretty simple. A wrinkle is added if the Will wasn't executed in Illinois. A typical scenario is where a person executes a Will in another state, and then moves to (and dies in) Illinois...

Jane Bryant Quinn on Prenups

Posted on June 03, 2008
Financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn has an interesting article on newsweek.com entitled "Prenups Aren't For Sissies." It's available here. The interesting thing is that Ms. Quinn is writing about prenups from experience -- she's actually just executed one, as she is getting remarried...

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