BDBF News and Legal Updates

When The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, passed away in August 2018, few could imagine how messy she had left her legal affairs. Nearly five years later, in July 2023, following years of nasty intra-family litigation, a Michigan jury concluded that a 2014 document found in — yes, Ms. Franklin’s couch cushions — was indeed...

An irrevocable life insurance trust (or “ILIT”) can be a critical component of estate planning for certain clients. Typically, the client who might benefit from an ILIT is the client who anticipates exposure to estate tax. At present, this includes DC clients who have more than $4 Million in total assets (life insurance, real estate,...

We have previously discussed powers of attorney and their role in estate planning. When we circulate draft estate planning documents to clients, we often get questions about the language within these documents. Here, we’ll shed a little bit more light on the language within these documents, how the documents were created, why we don’t recommend...

When most folks hear of “decanting”, they think of wine. When estate and trust attorneys hear of “decanting”, yes, many of us think about wine, but we also think about an important legal principle. The Maryland legislature passed a bill that will head to Governor Moore’s desk for signature permitting trust “decanting”. Decanting is the...

When we navigate estate planning documents with our clients, there is a dizzying array of roles and positions within the documents. With the Academy Awards just last weekend and movies on our mind, we present the Estate Planning Cast of Characters, our handy reference guide to who will have roles to fill in an estate...

We are taught from an early age to respect our elders.  And indeed, we love our aging relatives.  We take time away from work and  other activities to care for them and assist them.  Yet one of the most commonly-challenged probate issues arises from compensation that a family member took prior to a decedent’s death...

Cinema and television love to dramatize death.  And what could be more dramatic than feuding family members sitting in suspense around a lawyer’s conference table about to learn the contents of the Will of the dearly departed?  The Will is read out loud and all would learn together who has been disinherited and who was...