Your Estate Planning Binder Misses You
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
For some people, a sighting of their estate planning binder is as rare as seeing Bigfoot in line at your local Starbucks. The binder is often initially reviewed and then is stored away for various reasons; to protect the documents, to protect confidential information contained in the documents, or to prevent one from having to think about the...
A Second Chance to Double Your Tax Exemption
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
The IRS just issued Revenue Procedure 2017-34, which, for a limited time, has extended the deadline to file for portability elections. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (enacted in 2013) provided people with the process of “Portability” where a surviving spouse “inherits” the unused Federal Estate Tax Exemption of their predeceased spouse...
Your Home & Medi-Cal. When Your Home Is Exempt
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
This is an informative article from California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) on how your home and other assets impact Medi-Cal eligibility.
CANHR Website
Medi-Cal eligibility requires that an applicant (and his/her spouse) have a limited amount of assets. Your home is exempt from consideration as a resource when you or your spouse...
Trust Administration. What’s That?
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
Trust Administration – What’s that?
This is a question we get on occasion from clients. The terms trust administration or trust settlement refer to the process of following through with the trust provisions and distributions after someone has died. This process may involve helping the trustees (often a family member) with gathering and...
9 Things to Do After Your Email is Hacked
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
Email hacking has been in the news a lot, and while most of us don’t have information that rises to the level of national security, we still want to protect our privacy.
If your email gets hacked, do these nine things:
Change your password to a more secure one,
Go to the help section for your ISP for advice,
Report it to your ISP,
Notify your...
Resilience After Unimaginable Loss – An Interview with Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
Caring for a loved one can bring unimaginable joy as well as unparalleled despair. We do our best to try to comfort our clients and ask them to remember the good times, however that’s easier said than done. It takes more than words; it takes a certain level of resilience when coping with the loss of a loved one. It’s not easy. It...
Bypassing the Bypass Trust
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
In this article, Stephen M. Wood, Attorney in our Camarillo and Ventura County office discusses A-B Trusts and why you should consider having your trust reviewed by an Attorney now.
Bypassing the “B” Trust
Under the current estate tax regime, it is often unnecessary for a married couple to have what is commonly called an A-B Trust. The “A”...
Families Spend More To Care For Their Aging Parents Than To Raise Their Kids
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
This is an eye-opening article from Forbes on the cost of caring for aging parents. You might be surprised to read that it costs families more to care for a frail older adult than to raise a child for the first 17 years of her life. Planning for these costs now will prepare you and your family for the future.
Read the entire article here: Costs...
Stephen P. Bezaire Clients – Welcome to CunninghamLegal
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
We have had the pleasure of spending time with Stephen Bezaire and his team and are honored that he has entrusted his successful, long-standing practice to us at CunninghamLegal. Our shared passion for the law and estate planning bode well for a smooth and seamless transition as Stephen heads to a well-deserved retirement.
Most important is that...
Is Hiring a Specialist a Good Idea?
CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers
When I was going to law school, I often received calls from family members and friends with legal questions they had ranging from contracts, landlord-tenant issues, divorce, personal injury, workers compensation and the list goes on. I would try my best to help answer someone’s legal question, but I quickly realized that it is impossible for an...