– Legal Insights –
If you are expecting an inheritance, an estate planning tool known as a trust may prove useful, depending on your circumstances. Among the numerous types of trusts aimed at fulfilling different estate planning purposes, an inheritor’s trust is specially designed to help protect an inheritance. Purpose of an Inheritor’s Trust...
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When a wood floor fails because of a relative humidity issue, a common cause of trouble in the industry, someone needs to pay. All the actors begin the blame game in order to protect themselves from liability. The customers point fingers at the installers, the installers at the distributors, and...
When it comes to planning your estate some of the most important decisions you need to make involve the choices of who will serve under your power of attorney (we’ll call them your Agent), who will serve as your Health Care Agent in your Health Care Directive, who will serve...
August in Minnesota is a great time to discuss the importance of estate planning. It also happens to be “National Make a Will Month”. According to a recent survey, 64% of Americans do not have a will. Some of the top reasons people give for not doing a will include:...
As I talk with more groups and individuals I find that many people still see an estate plan as only necessary for those with substantial wealth, those that reached an advanced age, and those with health problems. Nothing could really be further from the truth. Consider Ann (not her real...
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court near the end of its 2014-15 term three weeks ago legalizing same-sex marriages throughout the country is of particular interest in Minnesota. This state spawned the progenitor marriage equality litigation 45 years ago, when first the Hennepin County District Court and then the...
Are you thinking about making a charitable donation this year? If so, there are a few things to consider before you write that check or transfer that car or other property, especially if you’re expecting a tax deduction. First, the charitable organization must be approved to accept deductible contributions. To...
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” —George Santayana, “The Life of Reason” (1906) The sweeping decision in mid-June by U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank deeming the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) unconstitutional and giving state officials a “last time” opportunity to repair it was...
A new law was enacted at the end of 2014 allowing states to establish qualified Achieving Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) programs for tax years after December 31, 2014. These programs allow a tax free account to be created to save money for disability related expenses for a designated beneficiary....
Under Minnesota law, a judgment creditor may garnish nonexempt property of a debtor to help satisfy a judgment. While this is a well established proposition, up until very recently it was entirely unclear whether a website and a web domain were property subject to garnishment and it was also unclear...
If you are business person looking to obtain a loan to purchase commercial real estate, the lender may require you to hold the property in a single purpose entity (typically a limited liability company (“LLC”) or corporation). If you are a lender in a position to finance your borrower’s commercial...