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South Florida Estate Planning Law (2 unread)

• My Interview on the Shalom Show

  Below is my interview with the Shalom Show, a Jewish public affairs cable show that is on tv nationwide.

   

   

   

   

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• Man dies with $40 million, no will, and no heirs

  Today’s crazy estate planning story comes form the New York Times, He Left a Fortune, to No One.

  Roman Blum died in New York last year at 97 years old. He was a Holocaust survivor and a successful real estate developer worth over [...]

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• Both Attorneys and Courts are Tired of Financial Institutions Refusal to Accept Powers of Attorney

  Banks Often Refuse to Accept Powers of Attorney

  One of the things that’s becoming more and more frustrating for trusts and estates lawyers in Florida is the refusal of banks and other financial institutions to accept properly drafted powers of attorney.

  A power of attorney is a document in which a person [...]

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• No Time for the Ole’ In-N-Out with Lynsi Torres

  Meet Lynsi Torres.

  She’s 30 years old. Thrice married*. A mother of twins. She never graduated college. I don’t think she ever had any business training. She loves drag racing. 

  And she’s worth over a billion dollars.

  Apparently, Lynsi has been recently “outed” as the owner and heir to the In-N-Out [...]

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• An Introduction to the Problems of Estate Planning for Digital Assets

  Have you ever wondered what happens to your digital assets when you die?

  By digital assets I mean your email, Facebook, Twitter and other accounts. What about your iTunes music purchases? You Amazon Kindle books? Are you allowed to transfer your music to your beneficiaries?

  How do you access your bank accounts [...]

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• Illinois Man Leaves Million Dollar Estate to Two Obscure Actors He Never Met

  Kevin Brophy was one of two obscure actors who will split a $1 million estate of a man he never met.

  This is a new one. I’m always hearing interesting stories about the various people that people leave their estates to. Family, mistresses, charities, their pets, nothing surprises me.

  Until now.

  According [...]

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• Back to Blogging: How (I draft documents)

  In the continuing “Back to Blogging” series, the “How” posts (and there will be more than one) will talk about how I run my estate planning practice. I am not talking about empty platitudes such as “I run my practice with hard work, ethics, morality, etc.” That’s not how.

  I mean literally, what [...]

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• Large Law Firms Are Abandoning their Trusts and Estates Practices

  According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, the large international “white shoe” law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton is jettisoning their estate planning practice, adding to the list of large firms doing so, including Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

  I’m not surprised.

  These gigantic international [...]

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• WSJ: What a Tangled Web We Leave

  On February 2, the Wall Street Journal had published a great article on estate planning entitled “What a Tangled Web We Leave,” discussing the various problems people have when loved ones die. There is a common theme in the article – [...]

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• Attorney Charged with Ethics Complaint over Probate Blog

  Number of comments: 1
  

  Every now and then, blogging will get someone in “trouble.” See e.g. Rakofsky v. Internet, in which one Joseph Rakofsky sued a whole bunch of bloggers and other media over their posts criticizing among other things, his competency and ethics.   I put the words “trouble” in quotes, because just [...]

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