This entry is occasioned by a recent article from Prof. Gerry W. Breyer, a very prominent scholar in the field of trusts and estates. A Grave Error: A Man Attempting to Fake His Own Death Was Caught Because of a Typo, by Gerry W. Beyer (the Governor Preston E. Smith Regents Professor of Law, Texas
In New York, is there a legal remedy for “wrongful life” when a hospital or a doctor refuses to follow the terms of a patient’s living will and his or her health care proxy’s instructions resulting in pain and suffering by the patient?
Most people have heard of legal actions for pain and suffering and
The governing principle of this blog is to be useful to the general public. One way to accomplish this goal is to avoid the use of jargon; another way is to avoid reporting on the minutiae of the practice by rehashing the recent decisions from the courts. (Attorneys have many outlets for such shoptalk.)
In
In these troubled times, we at Jaspan Schlesinger LLP extend our best wishes for the coming year to all.
Before my colleague Sally Donahue continues her series on guardianship matters next week, I thought I would fill in the gap and digress from the world of Trusts and Estates with some thoughts on the role
Mom needs help with her finances and daily life. She is no longer capable of paying her bills, doing her banking, managing her medications, and is generally failing mentally. As a doting child, you want to help her, but how? Well, you certainly can take her to the doctor, manage her healthcare, bring her groceries,
Continuing our theme of odd bequests (last time the blog considered the adventures of Trouble, Leona Helmsley’s millionaire Maltese), let’s consider some other weird or questionable estate plans if only as a warning to the reader.
“Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.” Thus did William Shakespeare make the
Cutting right to the chase, a spoiler alert: Trouble is dead! She shuffled off this mortal coil some years ago at the tender age of 12. You recall (don’t you?) that Trouble was a Maltese owned by Leona Helmsley. Trouble was the beneficiary of a $12 million bequest to a trust established for the dog’s
The Internal Revenue Service announced
‘Tis the Season to be scary. Halloween was grafted onto the ancient Celtic pagan holiday of Samhain. There are said to be places and times when the barrier between this world and that “other world” is very thin. In fact, the Irish have a word the “thin places,” Caol Áit. The holiday of
For very wealthy individuals and families, the strong possibility of a change of administrations in Washington portends massive changes in tax policy and it is not too soon to consider the possible changes and to plan for them.
For example, on the estate tax side of the ledger, the current estate and gift tax exemption
