Most families believe they will inherit their loved one’s debt. Most debt collectors count on that fear. Your debt does not automatically transfer to your heirs, but it shapes how much they receive and what the estate must pay before they get anything. Here is exactly what happens and what your family needs to know before the collectors call. Read more…

The One Big Beautiful Bill raised the estate tax exemption to $15 million per person. That provision made headlines everywhere. A second one didn't: a deduction limitation buried in a Congressional footnote that tax lawyers say may create double taxation inside family trusts, including special needs trusts with as little as $400,000 in assets. Here is what families with trusts need to know right now. Read more…

Most online accounts now require two steps to log in. The first step is the password. The second step is a verification code sent to a trusted device or phone number at the moment someone tries to access the account.

This is called two-factor authentication, and it has become the standard security requirement for financial accounts, investment platforms, email providers, and cloud storage. It is one of the most effective protections against fraud and identity theft.

It is also one of the most common reasons families cannot access accounts after a death. The person trying to log in has the password. But the verification code goes to a phone that is locked, a number that no longer works, or an email address that no longer exists.

If you are a divorced father, you already know something that most married fathers don't: showing up for your kids takes more deliberate effort than it looks like from the outside.

You have worked on the relationship you have with them. You know which weeks are yours and how to make them count. You have figured out the handoffs, the schedules, and the way to stay present even when circumstances make it complicated.

What I find almost universally, when a divorced father walks into my office, is that the one thing he has not done is update his estate plan to match the life he is actually living. The plan from before the divorce, or the one hastily put together during it, is almost certainly not the plan his children actually need.

If you are a stepfather, you know the difference between the legal definition of father and the real one.

The real one shows up. He learns the allergies, the fears, and the names of the friends. He drives to the practices and sits through the recitals and knows which child needs quiet when they're upset and which one needs noise. He considers these children his family, and they consider him theirs.

The legal definition is something else entirely. Under the law, a stepparent has no automatic legal relationship to a stepchild. Not unless that child has been formally adopted. No matter how many years you've shown up. No matter what you call each other. The law has no record of what you've built.

That gap, between the family you live in and the family the law recognizes, is the one a plan has to close.

There are two kinds of fathers.

The first kind coaches the games, makes it to the school plays, stays up late helping with the projects, and loves his family in every visible way. He thinks about what would happen if something happened to him: maybe during a long drive home, maybe after a close call, maybe in a quiet moment watching his kids sleep. He thinks about it and then moves on, because the day-to-day of being a father takes up almost everything he has.

Father's Day tends to celebrate the first kind. The presence, the showing up, the love that fills a room. 

The second kind does all of that and also answers the question.

The fathers who've truly done right by their families, the ones who've given their children something that outlasts them, are the ones who made a plan. Not because they expected the worst, but because they understood that loving someone means protecting them even when you can't be there.

If you haven't answered the question yet, this is where to start.

I work with parents on this exact question all the time, and especially this time of year, sitting right between Mother's Day and Father's Day, the love you have for your children tends to be at the forefront of your mind. But there's a question I find most parents haven't actually answered yet, even the ones who think they have.

When I sit down with parents, I find most have thought about who would take care of their children if something happened to them, maybe during a quiet moment on a long drive, or in a conversation with a partner that reached an agreement in their heads but never quite made it onto paper.

When a spouse dies, most surviving partners expect grief. They do not expect a tax bill. The "widow penalty" is a real and largely unrecognized consequence of losing a spouse that can cost a surviving partner thousands of dollars more every year in taxes and Medicare premiums, at the worst possible moment in their life. Here is what it is, who it affects, and what you can do now, while there is still time to plan.

You signed the Power of Attorney (POA). You thought your family was protected. But when a parent or spouse loses capacity, that document you trusted may get rejected at the very bank where you need it most, and your family may not have time to fight it. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, this is exactly the kind of gap I make it my job to close before you ever need to find out the hard way.

Tony Hsieh sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion and built one of the most admired companies in America. When he died at 46 without a will or a trust, his family was left to sort out an estate worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Publicly, slowly, and painfully. What happened next is a lesson everyone who has something to protect should read.