Your Worldly Possessions: A Complete Guide To Preserving, Passing On, And Inheriting Property

You've worked hard to build a secure, comfortable financial environment for both yourself and your loved ones. Don't compromise that enduring legacy with costly planning errors or faulty legal decisions. Written by an attorney with almost forty years of experience in property and probate law, Your Worldly Possessions helps you take charge of all your property, estate planning, and inheritance matters--from wills, trusts, and joint tenancy to disability, antenuptial agreements, and ways to avoid probate. You'll find clear, practical guidance on every available legal method--and its consequences--for protecting and securely passing on your estate regardless of its size, content, or value. Your Worldly Possessions outlines step-by-step methods for creating the best planning strategy for each stage of your earning life. It offers expert advice on the best ways to own and dispose of property, how estate proceedings work, and how to minimize postdeath estate proceedings and sharply reduce estate taxes. Each chapter contains the most commonly asked questions and responds to them with fast, accurate answers. Here you'll find solutions to your most pressing estate planning and inheritance concerns, as well as valuable insights into the consequences of dying without a will; the practical distinctions between joint, reciprocal, and mutual wills; trusts for disability, avoiding probate, reducing death taxes, and safeguarding family privacy; lifetime gifts that help your heirs minimize their tax bills and retain lifelong income; antenuptial agreements that protect an estate or children from the effects of a new marriage; the advantages and disadvantages of joint tenancy; living wills and medical directives that help meet spiraling health care costs; providing for disability; hiring and working with a qualified estate attorney; plus much, much more. Complete with a special, five-chapter section that safely guides surviving spouses, beneficiaries, and heirs through the thicke