Katya Sverdlov Blog

In New York, every Will must be witnessed by at least two witnesses. When the Will gets probated in Surrogate Court, the names of the Witnesses must be listed on the Probate Petition. Therefore, the Executor of the Will has a real problem when the signatures of the Witnesses are illegible and no other information about them is available.

When the Witnesses were the Testator’s friends, it may be possible to figure out their names based on familiarity with the Testator. Even then, there are usually other problems that arise when the Testator executed his Will without a lawyer.
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It is important to revisit your documents at least once every 5 years. As the tax law changes constantly, the documents created in the past may no longer be the most efficient ones. As your family situation changes, your Will may become completely outdated.

Changes in Law

In the past, estate tax threshold used to be $1MM. Anything above that amount would be taxed at 40%.
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There are different motivations for living child-free. Some couples focus on careers, travel or hobbies. Others see children as a burdensome financial obligation. Yet others are unable to have children. Regardless of reasons, planning for a childless couple may be somewhat different than for a couple with children (no need for guardians for minors), but just as important.
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As discussed in the previous article, there are very few of your assets that are protected from creditors in the event of a lawsuit. There are some simple steps that you can take to address your asset’s vulnerability to attacks by creditors.

1. Buy insurance. You should have a liability insurance policy on your car, on your home, on your business, and an umbrella policy.

2. Review ownership of assets.

Regardless of the President that is sitting in the Oval Office, the litigious nature of our society is not going to change.  There are many instances in which a client can be sued, including but not limited to: injuring someone in a car accident, being sued for malpractice, involvement in a business dispute, or owning a rental property in which someone was injured.

Certain assets are exempt from creditors as a matter of public policy:

When spouses divorce, there are often children left from first marriage. When one of the spouses remarries, he should be very careful that the children from the first marriage do not get disinherited.

The second spouse, who is often much younger and less financially secure, may exert pressure on her husband to provide for her in the event of his death.  The second spouse may have new children, whom the father sees on a daily basis. Simultaneously, the remarried husband may not see the children from first marriage as often (due to geography or ill-feelings from both sides).

Most people want to leave a legacy. Yet most people also have no idea how to go about doing it.  One simple way is through a life insurance policy.

Animals shelters often see beloved pets suddenly homeless because of the death of their owners and failure to plan properly. And while there may be more people willing to rescue a dog, but what about a horse or a lizard?

One way of planning properly for the care of a pet is to leave some designated money for the benefit of a shelter, to be used specifically in the care of your pet. This way, if anyone adopts the pet, the shelter can use the money to reimburse the new owner for the pet’s care. Of course, you should carefully research the shelter and ensure that they agree to this type of a plan.

Recently someone asked me a question: if an co-op apt. is owned jointly by spouses with right of survivorship, can Medicaid enforce a lien against the estate or the decedent's interest in the co-op when the joint owner who was a Medicaid recipient dies?

In the United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court rules that federal government must recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in a state for federal law purposes. Below are some tips in an estate planning concept:

1. Boomerang assets.

Lots of same-sex couples do not have children. While the couple may want to provide for each other, after the death of the second-to-die spouse, they each may have different dispositive wishes.
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Did you know? Code of Hammurabi (around 1792 BCE) is one of the oldest and most complete written collections of law. Hammurabi was the soxth king of Babylon.

The prologue to the Code expresses its purpose: “that the strong might not oppress the weak, that justice be given to orphan and widow”

Code has 252 separate provisions, arranged by subject (debts, family, personal injury, etc). Laws vary based on crime and social status of offender and victim.

The most famous principal of the Code is “an eye for an eye”.
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