Macs, Mandarin, and movies will rock your world next week.
Premarital agreements are hard to draft because they can deal with various areas of law. Estate planning and family law are the two biggies, but many different areas of property law can be affected. For instance, I recently was working on a premarital agreement, and the other attorney suggested that, if my client made contribution to his own retirement plan during his marriage, he had to make an equal contribution to his wife's retirement plan. Luckily I realized that the contribution limits for my client's retirement plan (a 401k) and his wife's plan (IRA) were not the same, so we were able to change the language in time. This is one of the reasons why I like working with a non-estate planner on a prenup, and if possible working collaboratively -- we can review the agreement from many different perspectives to make sure it "works."
The results are in from our poll about wills, and they do not look good . Only 35 percent of 724 respondents said that they have a will.
There’s a new movie out called Sweeney Todd. I haven’t seen it yet, but it has all the features I look for in a flick: revenge, dark humor, and even a little singing (ok, I confess that last one is a lie — I despise musicals).
The people marketing the movie are doing something fun [...]
Just a follow-up/clarification on this post from a month ago. It may be implied in the post, but in an intestate case (that is, where the decedent left no Will), all that's needed is a petition to amend heirship and a new affidavit of heirship.
I would also add that a lot of the difficulty and expense (in terms of time and money) in amending can be addressed at the beginning of the process. The attorney should explain to the client what an heir is, and the client should be able to get the attorney a list of all of the decedent's heirs, with full names and addresses (and, if possible, telephone numbers).
