Estate Planning, Probate & Elder Law Attorneys

» Nina Wang Probate Dispute

Isn't it funny how some people seem to be magnets for probate disputes? Anna Nicole Smith had a dispute during her life (over her husband's estate), and now there's a dispute following her death. The same is true of Nina "Little Sweetie" Wang. I blogged here about the controversy surrounding her husband's death. Now there is a fight over the estate of "Little Sweetie" herself. This article has the juicy details. The dispute pits Mrs. Wang's father-in-law, Wang Din-Shin, against "Tony Chan, a married feng shui master who claims to be Ms Wang's secret lover, [and who] says she wrote a new will in 2006 in which she named him as the sole heir."

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» Powers of Attorney vs. The Five Wishes Advance Directive

We all crave simplicity, don't we? I know I do, and I know I sometimes get frustrated when things seem complicated just for the sake of being complicated. But I also recognize that, sometimes, things are complicated because that's the way life is.

The Five Wishes advance directive is an attempt to simplify matters, by allowing a person to dictate "how you want to be treated if you get seriously ill and unable to speak for yourself." It's a do-it-yourself document, one not written in legalese. But, as Ray J. Koenig III and MacKenzie Hyde make clear in their article in this month's Illinois Bar Journal (to be found here), users of the Five Wishes need to be careful what they wish for.

Some of the problems addressed in the article:

-Five Wishes creates ambiguity, as it doesn't define important terms like "health care professional"

-Five Wishes blurs the line between an agent under a health care power of attorney and an agent under a property power of attorney. Five Wishes allows you to delegate some property-related activities to your (health care) agent.

-Five Wishes allows a principal to essentially name a doctor as his or her agent, which is contrary to Illinois law.

-Five Wishes is ambiguous regarding when the agent takes over in the decision-making process.

The authors make it clear that Five Wishes has some value as a tool to stimulate dialogue about hard-to-discuss issues, but there are obviously some very major concerns about whether Five Wishes should be used in addition to or in place of Illinois powers of attorney.

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