Klea Harris

If you’re single and childless, consider these three inconvenient truths before you decide to forego estate planning.

Serving as a trustee is not only a great honor, it’s also a major responsibility, and the role is definitely not for everyone. Serving as a trustee entails a broad array of duties, and you are both ethically and legally required to properly execute those duties or you could face liability for not doing so.

If you don’t properly address family heirlooms and keepsakes in your estate plan, it can lead to long-lasting disagreements that can tear your family apart.

To deal with this vulnerability and ensure your family never gets stuck in an expensive and unnecessary court process, before your kids leave home, have a conversation about estate planning and make sure they sign the following three documents.

If you work for someone else, or your income is otherwise dependent on being employed, here are several key milestones to consider as your plan for retirement.

In fact, without a thorough understanding of how the legal process works upon your death or incapacity, along with knowing how it applies specifically to your family dynamics and the nature of your assets, you’ll likely make serious mistakes when creating a DIY will or trust. And the worst part is that these mistakes won’t be discovered until you are gone—and the very people you were trying to protect will be the ones stuck cleaning up the mess you created just to save a few bucks.