Estate Planning

• If your spouse died last year or you got divorced, you should update your estate planning documents in order to remove your former spouse's name as a beneficiary, agent, executor, and trustee.  

We a pleased to announce that our law firm has been named a 2016 Law Firm 500 Honoree. Earlier this year we were nominated for our growth, operational excellence and commitment to client service. It is an honor to be included as one of the top one-hundred fastest growing law firms in America!

Channel 7 news broadcaster Jim Otte recently interviewed Nancy Roberson on the news special WHIO Reports about wills, powers of attorney, and other estate planning issues.  The program contains 30 minutes of valuable advice about estate planning and discusses the topic of being prepared at any age for sudden illness or death.  Watch the video here: http://video.daytondailynews.com/WHIO-Reports-Estate-Planning-June-12-2016-B-30993165.

The information in this article is news that was reported last year, but we believe that it bears repeating due to the impact that the legislation has on the hundreds of thousands of people in the military who have children with disabilities.  With this legislation passed through the National Defense Authorization Act, a special needs trust can now be put in place to protect a disabled child's benefits from being discontinued due to an inheritance that the child receives from a parent. 

We see a lot of dissension in our office among family members who have differing opinions about the type of long term care that mom or dad should receive and how the parent's money should be spent to pay for the care.

Not to "beat a dead horse," but many of the issues that family members fight about could have been resolved if mom and dad had made the decisions in advance by doing their estate planning and developing a long-term care plan years in advance.

Roberson Law President Nancy Roberson has received a BV Distinguished rating from Martindale-Hubbell for receiving very high ratings from her peers and clients for both Nancy's legal ability and ethical standards. This is a prestigious rating by a well respected company in the legal industry.

Estate planning and elder law attorneys in Ohio have been on pins and needles the past year to hear the decision about the fate of legislation pertaining to titling a home in the name of a Revocable Living Trust (RLT).  The legislation was proposed by the Ohio State Bar Association to fix the problem of counting a house titled in the name of a RLT as a resource that would be included for determining if a person would qualify for Medicaid.  This problem was created several years ago by an Ohio appellate court decision.

Many Estate Planning Attorneys, Financial Planners, and Accountants took note of the tax changes that President Obama recently proposed regarding capital gains taxes.  If these changes took place, people inheriting real estate could suffer great tax consequences for the property they inherit.  

We are in the business of helping people prepare and plan for the inevitable, so every year we write an article advising our clients about what not to do when it comes to death and disability planning.  The mistakes we have seen people make throughout the past 30 years we have been in practice have caused a lot heartache, stress, and money for our clients to correct.

Over five hundred estate planning attorneys were originally looked at and then narrowed down to one hundred eight nominees. Only nineteen winners were chosen, after surveys were conducted and scored to determine the estate planning attorneys who provide exceptional service and overall satisfaction, resulting in an elite group of professionals. Nancy Roberson has been selected, and is named, as one of these elite professionals in the October issue of Cincinnati Magazine.