Estate Planning

Let’s get this out of the way: estate planning is not for the rich and famous. In fact, pretty much everyone has some form of an estate. Your estate refers to everything you own: Your home, your car, life’s savings, retirement accounts and personal possessions....

Wills allow people to determine the distribution of their property upon their death. However, some individuals pass away before they have the opportunity to create one. When this happens, the court distributes the deceased’s assets according to the law. Tennessee’s...

Maybe you’ve always been a private person -- maybe not. One thing is for certain, however: All the privacy you have pretty much goes out the window once you pass away, and your will gets filed with the local probate court.  At that point, your will is a matter of...

=When doing your estate planning, you may want to add some of your digital assets. Maybe you have built up collections of movies, video games, music and books. These are all in digital format, but you think of it the same way as hard copies. You paid a lot for all of...

You’ve done the responsible thing and drawn up an estate plan -- but now you aren’t sure what to do with the documents. You have a few options. It’s always good to store a digital copy online and have a paper copy where it can easily be found. If you put it somewhere...

There are a lot of compelling reasons to try to avoid probate -- not the least of which is tax abatement. Nobody wants to think that a chunk of their hard-earned assets will end up in the government’s coffers. Well, there’s some good news in that regard if you happen...

When you die, an entire lifetime of assets will pass through probate to the people that you love. Your estate plan probably leaves clear instructions about who should inherit which assets. You likely want to leave meaningful and valuable items to your spouse, your...

Just about everyone passes away with some debt – even if it’s a couple of credit card balances or some medical bills that haven’t been paid yet. However, at the end of 2016, Credit.com reported that Americans had an average of over $61,000 in debt.  That’s a lot of...

Your estate plan is the roadmap that your loved ones will use to pass along your assets after your death. One of the first things that you have to do when you’re creating the plan is to list all your assets so you know that they all have a place.  What some people...

It’s easy enough to think that you do not need an estate plan if you’re in your 20s or 30s. You know that life expectancy means you’ll likely live until nearly 80 years old. This makes you feel as if you still have at least five decades to get that plan in place. ...