Author: Lockhart Gardner

If you have a living trust, you probably think that you will avoid probate. Well, that may be true, but having a stack of documents you call a trust is not enough to do the job, you have to now put assets in your trust. Imagine your living trust is a bucket. Once you sign your trust, you have an empty bucket, but you can now start filling it with your stuff. How do you fill your bucket? Let’s...

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin once wrote in a letter. Unfortunately, those words are just as true today as they were in the 1700s. Worse, sometimes the two come as a package deal. After all, when someone dies, their family members must go through a lengthy series of tax, financial, and legal steps in order to...

The deduction for qualified medical expenses has survived yet another round of tax reform.  The IRS will allow a tax payer to deduct expenses that exceed 7.5% of their adjusted gross income for 2017 and 2018.  Beginning in 2019, all taxpayers may deduct only the amount of the total unreimbursed allowable medical care expenses for the year that exceeds 10% of their adjusted gross income. For...

Helen Justice, Geriatric Care Manager, at Advanced Wellness, published an informative article on updates to VA disbursements: Are you a War-Time Veteran or Widow of War Time Veteran? There are Financial Benefits available for War Time Veteran and Widow of War Time Veteran to help defray the cost for senior placement Assisted Living Facilities, Board and Care Homes, and In-Home Care. There is a...

–Our friends at Marcum, LLP recently published a detailed article on the new tax plan.– Highlights of key provisions include the following: Individual Provisions The act’s final version retains the seven overall tax brackets, but tax cuts are achieved by cutting the rates themselves. The final version cuts the top rate to 37% as follows: Filing Status Rates Single...

Welcome to CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers On September 1st, 2017, The Sydney Law Firm, P.C. was acquired by CunninghamLegal. Jeff Sydney and his wife, Alicia, decided it was the the right time for them to retire and pass the baton to our firm to serve his clients. We are honored that Jeff Sydney has entrusted his successful, long-standing practice to us at CunninghamLegal....

CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers “Estate Planning” is a general phrase that most people associate with planning for the end of one’s life. While that basic definition is a good place to start, estate planning goes far beyond just planning for the distribution of assets upon death. It also includes planning for periods of incapacity, healthcare decision making, Medi-Cal...

CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers Trust Protector. Like a Superhero: The American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys offers insight on the subject of Trust Protectors. In the Estate Planning practice in the United States the Trust Protector is a relatively new concept. Originally started in England, it made it’s way to the United States only recently. As a result, not...

CunninghamLegal – The Living Trust Lawyers Incapacity is generally defined as lacking the ability to make decisions for oneself. This can occur due to a mental impairment or a physical disability or illness, which prevents a person from having the ability to communicate their reasonable decisions to others. Like most people, Snow White did not know that she would become incapacitated....