Individuals need different estate planning instruments at different times of their lives, essentially building on what they had earlier.

1.  An 18 year old should have a health care power of attorney and HIPPA disclosure form so parents can assist with medical decisions.

2.  Unmarried and recently married couples need wills and health care documents to take care of each other during sickness and after death.

3.  Couples with young children need wills and trusts to designate a guardian and to provide for their children.

4.  Divorcing couples need to revise documents to remove the soon to be ex-spouse from them.

5.  Re-marrying couples need a pre-nuptial agreement and perhaps a trust to provide for the new spouse, but ultimately distribute assets to children from a prior marriage.

In summary, for the recent high school grad, the soon to be betrothed, or soon to be re-married, the ideal present is a gift card for legal services.

“When Harry Met Sally” remains one of my favorite films.   Nora Ephron, its screenwriter died yesterday.  In her last book, Ms. Ephron mentioned a humorous list of items she will not miss and items she will miss after death.  

The not missed list is dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and panels on “Women in Film.”

The missed list is her kids, Nick (her husband), taking a bath, coming over the bridge to Manhattan, and pie.

Update 6/27:  After today’s Obamacare decision, apparently Chief Justice Roberts will now be on the missed list.  Unfortunately.

RIP.

As part of an estate plan, an individual should have a health care power of attorney to make medical decisions in the event of incapacity.  Key factors/characteristics of a decision maker are:

1.  Level head.
2.  Question raiser.
3.  Lives near the individual.

Under these criteria, I doubt the Lohan family would designate Lindsay to make their decisions.

Wills are public records.  Any assets distributed by the will are also public.  In Hamilton County this info is all accessible  on-line.

Joe Paterno’s family recently was criticized because they asked for, and received, permission to keep his will under seal. After a bit of an outcry, they agreed to remove the seal.

A few thoughts on this issue:

1.  The will is vanilla – all of his assets will go to his trust agreement.  I see no reason to keep this info private other than general public figure hubris which thinks that laws and policies for everyone else do not apply to public figures.  c.f. Geithner, Tim and Rangel, Charles among others.

2.  By asking for an exception to the privacy rules, the family and its attorneys made this a public matter.  Now, they have attorneys in Cincinnati opining on the will and their privacy request when it would most likely have remained under the radar for everyone except those in State College.

3.  The interesting info that the family would like to keep private is the net worth of JoePa.  This info could have been remained private if the trust were funded during JoePa’s life, or if the financial assets had transfer on death designations.

I do not know if the assets were re-titled in his trust, but there is no excuse for not doing so.  Anyone who is  85 years old should make sure that his estate plan is current and assets are titled properly.  An 85 year old with an aggressive form of cancer should make sure to review his estate plan and asset titling as of yesterday.

Fifteen years ago, a friend mentioned to me that divorce is the worst kind of estate planning.  Those words ring true not only for estate planning, but also financial planning.  Accordingly, here are 10 things a divorce lawyer will not tell you.

n.b.  It is purely coincidental that today is my 19th wedding anniversary.