Wills and Estates Insights
Analysis and practical guides on wills and estates.
27 articles, checklists, and guides on wills and estates law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Final Arrangements Toolkit: Disposition Directives, Price Comparisons, and Benefit Claims
This toolkit provides the documents that make final arrangements manageable, ordered from the preparation that prevents problems to the responses that fix them. It opens with a disposition directive, a funeral wishes letter, and the one-page kitchen drawer sheet that families actually find in the first hour. It includes a telephone price worksheet built around the two questions that expose a fivefold price spread, a general price list comparison, a script for the arrangement conference with the exact phrases that assert each right, an itemized statement review, and a Funeral Rule complaint letter. It then covers the cemetery fee inquiry, preneed contract questions, veterans benefits claims and a DD-214 request, a death certificate order worksheet, a notification tracker, a credit bureau deceased notice, and an outline for a disposition dispute petition.
Funeral Planning and Final Arrangements Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers the days after a death in the order the work must be done, and the afternoon of preparation that prevents nearly all of it. It leads with the four documents to find before making any arrangement, because families routinely pay for a funeral twice. It sets out the twenty-minute phone comparison that the federal price disclosure requirement makes possible, the things a funeral provider may never require you to buy, and the exact phrases that assert each right. It covers who holds the legal authority to decide and what to do when a family disagrees, the death certificates and notifications that follow, and the benefits that go unclaimed—with a separate sequence for when there is no money to pay.
Arranging a Funeral and Handling Final Affairs: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through the days after a death in the order the work actually has to be done, beginning with the first twenty-four hours and the four things to find before making any arrangements. It explains how to get comparable prices in twenty minutes using the telephone disclosure requirement, what a general price list contains, and the specific things a funeral provider may never require you to buy. It covers who holds the legal right to decide, what to do when a family disagrees, and the authorization requirements for cremation. It then moves to the administrative work: how many death certificates to order and who needs them, the benefits that go unclaimed including veterans burial benefits and employer coverage, and what to do when there is no money. It ends with the afternoon of preparation that prevents nearly all of it.
Funeral, Burial, and Death Care Law: The Funeral Rule, Remains, and Final Arrangements
Death care is a consumer transaction conducted by people who are grieving, on a short timeline, with a seller whose product is impossible to compare. This article explains the Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule—the general price list, the itemized statement, the right to buy only what you want, and the prohibition on requiring embalming or refusing an outside casket—and then the state law that determines who actually has the legal right to decide what happens to a body. It covers preneed contracts and the trust and insurance arrangements behind them, cemetery contracts and their perpetual care obligations, veterans burial benefits including national cemetery eligibility and the burial allowance, and the anatomical gift framework. It closes on death certificates, home funerals and green burial, disputes among family members, and what happens when nobody claims a body.
Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives: A Practical Guide
A power of attorney and a health care directive are the documents most likely to be needed and least likely to exist, and the ones whose failure produces a guardianship proceeding that costs more than the entire estate plan. This guide covers both. It explains what a durable power of attorney does, why springing powers create the problem they were meant to solve, and the specific authorities that must be granted expressly because the statutory form withholds them by default. It covers the third-party acceptance problem, which is the most common practical failure, and the agent's fiduciary duties and recordkeeping obligations. The second half addresses health care documents: the proxy, the living will, the HIPAA authorization that is separate and necessary, and the POLST that operates differently from all of them, along with guardianship as the alternative when the documents do not exist.
Estate Administration Toolkit: Petitions, Notices, Inventories, and Accountings
A working kit for administering an estate. Section A holds the diagnostic worksheets: an asset titling review that determines whether probate is needed, a small estate threshold check, and a solvency screen. Section B holds the opening documents: a petition outline, a letters order request, and an EIN and account setup list. Section C holds the creditor package: published and direct notices, a claim log, allowance and disallowance letters, and a statutory priority worksheet. Section D holds the inventory template and the estate ledger. Section E holds beneficiary communications and a personal property distribution protocol. Section F holds the closing package: an accounting format, receipts and releases, and a discharge petition. Section G holds a tax calendar with the portability and disclaimer deadlines. Section H collects the primary authorities.
Probate and Estate Administration Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A deadline ordered checklist for administering an estate. It opens with the first week, including the insurance call about vacancy that families miss and that causes the worst outcomes in this field. It then runs the titling review that determines whether probate is required at all, the simplified procedures worth asking about before filing anything, the petition and appointment, the estate account and ledger that protect the representative personally, the creditor notice that must include direct written notice to known creditors, the claim period and statutory payment priority, the inventory and appraisals that fix the basis step up, the four tax filings and the portability and disclaimer deadlines, and closing with releases and a discharge order.
Administering an Estate: A Practical Guide for Executors and Families
This guide runs an estate administration in order, from the week of the death to the discharge order. It covers what to do in the first thirty days including the insurance step that families miss, how to find out whether probate is required at all, the petition and appointment, the estate bank account and the recordkeeping that protects the representative personally, the creditor notice and claim period that sets the timeline, the inventory and valuation, the four tax filings and the portability election that is missed most often, selling property, dealing with beneficiaries, the accounting, and closing the estate with releases and a discharge order that ends the exposure.
Probate and Estate Administration: From Death to Final Distribution
When someone dies, what happens next is decided by a set of rules most families encounter exactly once. This article explains what probate actually is and what passes outside it, when a small estate affidavit or summary procedure avoids full administration, how a personal representative is appointed and what duties attach on appointment, how creditor claims are handled and why the notice period is the single most important deadline in the case, how intestate succession works when there is no will, what a surviving spouse can claim regardless of the will, how the estate is inventoried, valued, and taxed, and how the administration is closed with an accounting and final distribution.
Digital Assets in Estate Planning: RUFADAA, Cryptocurrency, and Online Accounts
A modern estate contains assets that no probate court can order transferred, because they exist only as entries on servers governed by contracts the decedent clicked through and never read. The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, adopted in nearly every state, resolves the access problem by creating a priority scheme in which an online tool provided by the platform beats the will, which beats the terms of service. Cryptocurrency held in self-custody presents a different and harsher problem: there is no custodian to compel, and a private key lost at death is value destroyed permanently rather than merely inaccessible. This article covers the legal framework for fiduciary access, the practical mechanics of inventorying and transferring digital property, the drafting language that actually works, and the security discipline that keeps a plan from becoming a theft vector.
Elder Law Toolkit: Benefits, Housing, Capacity, and Elder Abuse Response
A working kit for elder law practice and for families managing it themselves. Section A compares the benefit programs side by side and maps which one pays for what. Section B holds worksheets: the transfer penalty calculation, the spousal impoverishment snapshot, and a care cost comparison. Section C is templates: power of attorney provisions that matter, a personal services caregiver agreement, a facility site visit script, an admission agreement addendum, a Medicare expedited appeal request, a Medicaid fair hearing request, a discharge appeal, an estate recovery hardship waiver request, an APS report, a power of attorney revocation, and an accounting demand. Section D collects the primary authorities.
Medicaid Long-Term Care Eligibility Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A working checklist for qualifying an applicant for long-term care Medicaid and protecting them once care begins. It runs the pre-application inventory, the capacity documents, the resource and income analysis with exempt assets listed, the five-year lookback review transaction by transaction, the spousal protections and the resource assessment, the complete verification package, filing and deadline management, the fair hearing, and estate recovery. Separate sections cover the Medicare skilled nursing appeal, what to strike from an admission agreement, and the response to suspected poor care or financial exploitation.