Estate Planning

Estate Planning should be one of your New Year's resolutions. Each New Year comes with new resolutions. Despite the success or failure of keeping last year's resolutions, Pittsburgh residents probably do not hesitate to make new ones each year. Pittsburgh residents...

Decisions related to your health and medical care are highly personal and are typically made after consulting your physician and weighing the related pros and cons. Even under the best of circumstances, it can be difficult to decide whether the potential benefits of a...

Estate planning, including Will preparation, is important. However, despite the best intentions to have a serious conversation with aging parents about estate planning, including preparation of or updates to their Wills, Pittsburgh residents can get caught up in the...

As you prepare to gather and celebrate with your loved ones this holiday season, it is important to consider having conversations with aging parents about their estate plans. Similar to politics and religion, many people consider topics related to death and money...

The importance of comprehensive estate planning cannot be overstated. In addition to passing wealth on to loved ones and ensuring that your assets and personal belongings are distributed according to your wishes, an estate plan can also be used to plan and account for...

Why do estate planning? Many people do not think it is necessary.  One person may say, "I only have a house and a bank account, so I do not need to prepare a Will." Not true, a Will helps to make sure that your assets go where you want them to go after you pass away....

The preparation of Living Wills is part of estate planning, along with preparation of Last Wills and Testaments and Powers of Attorney. Living Wills indicate what medical treatment patients want or do not want when patients have end-stage medical conditions or are...

Your estate planning might include the preparation of a HIPAA Authorization, which document would permit someone to have access to your medical information. A HIPAA Authorization which complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and...

Last week's blog discussed the need to include Social Security Retirement benefit planning when engaging in estate planning or long term care planning with an elder law attorney since income is an important consideration in determining how much money you will have to...

When engaging in estate planning, or even long term care planning, with an elder law attorney, it is a good idea to include Social Security Retirement benefit planning.  Why?  For most Americans, Social Security Retirement benefits are an important part, if not all,...