A durable power of attorney allows you to choose a person you trust to handle your financial affairs if you become incapacitated and can’t handle them yourself. If you don’t have a durable power of

In Texas, Wills do not need to be notarized to be valid.  However, the required formalities of a valid Texas Will differ depending on whether the will is an attested Will or a holographic Will. What

Last week, I discussed why estate planning is important despite our optimistic outlook for the future. The article was prompted by an email I received about a man, “Tom,” who believed he was well until

Someone contacted me last week inquiring whether a Will is valid in Texas if it is not dated. Apparently, the individual’s father-in-law died leaving a short typed Will. He signed the Will and two unrelated

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I received a question from someone who wondered whether revoking a current will would revive a will that was signed previously. Unfortunately, I seem to have accidentally deleted the email before

I have written before that making a will is not a something you do just once in your life. Your will is something that should change as your life does. Otherwise it can become an

When Texans draft wills and name beneficiaries, they expect that the beneficiaries they have named will outlive them. But that is not always the case. Sometimes a beneficiary named in a will dies first. Most

Parents often go to great lengths to make sure they treat their children equally, not only during their lifetime but also by leaving them an equal share of their estate upon their death. But in

A question I hear often is whether a person who signs as a witness can also receive a gift under the will. In Texas, the short answer is that the will itself is not invalid

My colleague, Candice Aiston, an Oregon estate planning attorney, included some sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (pdf) in a recent article. According to the CDC, 121,087 people ages 25 to