Dear Crain & Wooley Family, We are so thankful for each of you and hope that y’all stay healthy during this time of uncertainty. Crain & Wooley remains open to serve your estate planning needs. We are fully functional virtually and are having limited in-person meetings as...
Why is an estate planning firm discussing COVID-19? I mean give it a break already, right? I have read many updates from the CDC, local and national agencies as well as medical professionals guiding us on how best to “flatten-the-curve” so that our medical infrastructure is...
Every week, we encounter many different types of wills from those created using an online self-help product to those hastily scribbled on the back of a napkin before a medical procedure. The family and friends of the testator (the will’s author) are often surprised that...
Generosity is a wonderful attribute, yet there is some confusion regarding the “Gift Tax”. Have you heard that you could donate or give $15,000 (it used to be $10,000) each year without tax consequences? Many people are confused by this rule. Unless you have gifted an...
What do Tupac Shakur, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley, Steve McNair, Martin Luther King Jr., Stieg Larsson, Abraham Lincoln, Prince, Barry White, Sonny Bono, Howard Hughes, and Pablo Picasso have in common? They all died without a will, trust, or any estate...
Part of an estate planning attorney's job is to play devil's advocate and ask the question "what if?" What if you can't sign your own name?What if your mental capacity is diminished and you need a guardian?What if you can't make your own medical decisions? Let me...
After our initial post about the SECURE Act, we began to receive questions, and in response have created a list of FAQs. Each of you is in a unique situation and as such the below questions are general in nature. Reach out to a...
As an estate planning firm, we encourage all who we encounter to stop procrastinating and be proactive in creating a plan. Sometimes things occur in life that makes us all more aware of the need for an estate plan or at a minimum the need...
The law finds its way into a lot of movies. I might be so bold to say that law finds its way into MOST movies. Sometimes the law is an essential plot point of the movie. One recent example is Knives Out. As I watched...
The End of the Stretch IRA The Stretch IRA was a financial strategy that allowed inherited IRAs to be stretched out over the lifetime of a beneficiary. To put it another way, Stretch IRAs allowed a beneficiary who was younger than the former owner of the...