We at Yates Campbell LLP are thinking of our staff, clients, friends, and members of our community during these difficult times. We remain available to assist with your legal matters, and the collective well-being is at the top of our minds. While we have no reason to believe that anyone who has visited our offices […]
At the 38th Annual Trusts and Estates Seminar, Tom Yates and Alvi Aggarwal gave a presentation on recent developments in Virginia trusts and estates law. The slides from that presentation are available at https://yatescampbell.com/2019-va-update-slides/.
This year, new tax legislation—perhaps the most significant in over 30 years—went into effect. The new legislation markedly alters the tax laws for both individuals and businesses, including some of the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax provisions. The new law did not eliminate the estate, gift, or generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes, nor did it […]
In Thorsen v. Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Virginia Supreme Court established that attorneys who draft wills are liable to the intended beneficiaries of their services. The opinion is available here. This case is notable for two reasons: (i) it marks a change in what some, or perhaps many, attorneys believed […]
What happens when a resident of another state dies owning Virginia real estate? When a person dies owning real estate in more than one state, ancillary probate may be necessary to transfer some of the real estate. Let’s say Henry passes away. At the time of his death, Henry was a resident of a state […]
Charitable trusts are often appealing to donors who wish to give significant sums to charity. These kinds of trusts afford tax benefits for donors and allow donors to retain certain benefits for themselves or their family members. For small donations, however, charitable trusts are not typically feasible: they involve setup and administration costs in the […]
Unitrusts and the Big Problem They Address Some trusts have different income beneficiaries and remainder beneficiaries. Such a trust might provide, for example, that the surviving spouse receives all of the income while he/she is alive, and the children receive what’s left upon the surviving spouse’s death. The interests of the income beneficiaries (the spouse in […]
Our estate planning process is a collaboration between us and our clients. The process itself is something we work with each client to define, so it varies from client to client. The time it takes to get from contacting us to a complete estate plan also varies from client-to client. Some clients wish to have their estate […]
You might think that any lawyer with law degree (a J.D.), a license to practice law, and no disciplinary complaints can make you a good estate plan or advise you well regarding an estate or trust. Those things are important, but they might not be enough.
Choosing “Something Else” Previously, we distinguished English per stirpes from the other distribution methods. In the scenario in Part 1, in which all of Henry and Wendy’s children die before them, the allocation methods other than English per stirpes all produced the same result. In this post,
