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Trust Funding: Setting Your Trustee Up for Success
August 27th, 2025
A revocable living trust can serve as a valuable estate planning tool to help ensure that your finances remain well managed if you become incapacitated (unable to manage your affairs while you are alive) and to provide future financial security for y…
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Why a Trust for Your Child Should Mature with Your Child
August 20th, 2025
From the moment a child is born, a parent feels an instinctive drive to protect and nurture. We childproof our homes, carefully choose schools, offer guidance through adolescence, support their careers, and watch with pride as they start their own li…
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Four Tips to Avoid a Will Contest
July 16th, 2025
Fighting over provisions in your will or trust can derail your final wishes, rapidly deplete your financial legacy, and tear your loved ones apart. However, with proper planning, you can help your family avoid a will contest and potentially a disastr…
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Do Not Let Your Money and Property Go to the State: Why You Need an Estate Plan so any Unclaimed Property Does Not Escheat
June 11th, 2025
Americans tend to bristle when any level of the government meddles in their private lives, especially with their money. Look no further than the famous “death and taxes” quote for a sense of how Americans feel about bureaucratic creep and governm…
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The Trust Protection Myth: Your Revocable Trust Protects Against Lawsuits
March 19th, 2025
Many people believe that once they set up a revocable living trust and change the ownership of their accounts and property from themselves as individuals to their trust, those accounts and property are protected from lawsuits. This is not true. While…
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Why Joint Ownership (JTWROS) Should Not Necessarily Be the Go-To Plan for Newlyweds
February 12th, 2025
If you recently married or have been married for a while and have acquired additional money or property (or plan to), you have options regarding how your assets can be owned. Although joint ownership seems easy and convenient, particularly when that…
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Four Steps for Stopping Mail After Someone Dies
January 29th, 2025
Once you have been appointed the executor or personal representative of a deceased loved one’s probate estate, or when you step in as the successor trustee of the loved one’s trust, one of the things you should do early in the process is to notif…
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Categories: Probate
Will My Revocable Living Trust Avoid Probate? It Depends.
December 24th, 2024
If you have established a revocable living trust (which we will refer to simply as a trust), congratulations! You are on the right track in creating a comprehensive estate plan. However, you are only halfway there. Many people believe that because th…
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Wills, Trusts, and Dying Intestate: How They Differ
December 18th, 2024
Most people understand that having an estate plan benefits them and their loved ones. However, many individuals do not initiate the estate planning process because they do not fully understand the nuances of foundational estate planning tools such as…
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Caution: Using a DIY Deed to Create Joint Owners and Avoid Probate Can Lead to Unintended Consequences
December 11th, 2024
One common way to avoid the probate requirement for real estate after the owner dies is to add children or other individuals to the property title as joint owners with rights of survivorship. When joint owners have survivorship rights and one joint o…
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Attorney Jana McCreary
Houston Estate Planning Attorney Jana R. McCreary has been an attorney for over twenty years, a career move she made after working for over a decade with adults and children with intellectual disabilities and mental illness. Graduating summa cum laud… Read More