Family & Disputes
Common estate planning myths
A short list of widely held beliefs that are not accurate, each of which causes real harm.
Beneficiary Blueprints — Who gets what, and how it goes wrong
Family & Disputes
Where to start if you have nothing in place
A practical sequence for anyone who has been deferring this, ordered by consequence rather than by complexity.
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Family & Disputes
The letter that goes with the will
A document with no legal force that does more than most of the legal ones to prevent conflict.
Family & Disputes
When someone is left out and finds out
The reaction is generally about the message rather than the money, and there are better and worse ways for it to happen.
Family & Disputes
Sibling relationships after a parent dies
The parent was frequently the thing holding the relationships together, and the estate is where that becomes visible.
Business Succession
The family meeting about the business
Consistently identified as the highest-value step in family business succession, and the one most often avoided.
Estate Tax
Gifting to reduce a taxable estate
Effective where there is genuine exposure, counterproductive where there is not, and the distinction is frequently missed.
Wills & Trusts
All wills & trusts →
Wills & Trusts
Moving states and what it does to your plan
Documents drafted for one state generally remain valid elsewhere and may no longer produce the intended result.
Wills & Trusts
Where to keep the documents
A will that cannot be found is treated as revoked in many states, which makes storage a legal question rather than a housekeeping one.
Wills & Trusts
Do-it-yourself wills and where they fail
Online and template wills are adequate for genuinely simple situations and produce expensive failures elsewhere.
Beneficiary Designations
All beneficiary designations →
Beneficiary Designations
The annual review nobody schedules
An hour a year keeps an estate plan accurate, and the absence of it is why most plans no longer reflect their author.
Beneficiary Designations
Minors, young adults and staged inheritance
Money arriving outright at eighteen or twenty-one is a common default and rarely what anyone would choose deliberately.
Beneficiary Designations
Unmarried partners and what they are not entitled to
Long cohabitation creates almost no automatic rights in most jurisdictions, and the belief that it does causes real harm.
Probate
All probate →
Probate
When an executor gets it wrong
Beneficiaries have remedies, and the threshold for using them is higher than dissatisfaction.
Probate
When a beneficiary cannot be found
A missing heir can stall an administration indefinitely, and there are established procedures for dealing with it.
Probate
Selling estate property
The largest single task in most administrations, with authority questions and tax consequences worth understanding first.
Estate Tax
All estate tax →Estate Tax
Gifting to reduce a taxable estate
Effective where there is genuine exposure, counterproductive where there is not, and the distinction is frequently missed.
Estate Tax
Gifts made shortly before death
Transfers in the final months attract scrutiny from tax authorities, from Medicaid assessors and from disappointed relatives.
Estate Tax
Estate income tax during administration
An estate is a taxpayer in its own right, and executors frequently discover this after the deadline has passed.
Business Succession
All business succession →Business Succession
The family meeting about the business
Consistently identified as the highest-value step in family business succession, and the one most often avoided.
Business Succession
Passing on a professional practice
Regulated practices face restrictions on who can own them, which narrows the succession options considerably.
Business Succession
Selling to employees
Employee ownership preserves continuity and carries tax advantages, alongside genuine complexity and cost.
Family & Disputes
All family & disputes →
Family & Disputes
Where to start if you have nothing in place
A practical sequence for anyone who has been deferring this, ordered by consequence rather than by complexity.
Family & Disputes
Common estate planning myths
A short list of widely held beliefs that are not accurate, each of which causes real harm.
Family & Disputes
The letter that goes with the will
A document with no legal force that does more than most of the legal ones to prevent conflict.
About Beneficiary Blueprints
Wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, probate and business succession — the documents that decide an estate, and the mistakes that quietly undo them. We publish explanatory articles rather than news, which means an article here is written to still be useful a year from now. Every piece is bylined, sourced and read by an editor before it appears — the full process is set out in our editorial policy.