Blog Post Archives - Timins Law Group

Give Like Dolly: Making Your Legacy Count

Posted on September 11, 2026

Dolly Parton was much more than a singer and entertainer, she was a songwriter, businesswoman, and cultural icon whose impact extended far beyond her music (That is a pretty impressive list). Dolly Parton spent her lifetime building a remarkable legacy through her creative work, businesses, and philanthropy. One of Dolly’s most notable philanthropic endeavors (and closest to my heart) is her Imagination Library. While few of us will leave behind a legacy on the scale of Dolly Parton’s, her death is a reminder of an important estate planning question: What happens to the things we leave behind and how do we continue to care for the people and causes that were so important to us? When considering the legacy we

Medicaid Planning In 2026: How It Helps Protect Your Assets

Posted on September 11, 2026

Long term care is one of the fastest ways a family can lose financial stability. In a national survey, seventy percent of adults age sixty five and older will need some type of long term care during their lifetime(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020). In New York, where care costs are often higher than the national average, the risk is even more intense for families who own a home, have retirement savings, or both. This is where Medicaid planning becomes a practical tool, not a loophole. Done correctly, it can help you qualify for benefits while legally protecting key assets like a primary residence for a spouse, certain income streams, and carefully structured savings. In this guide, you

Estate Planning in 2026: What It Is and Why It Matters More Than Ever

Posted on September 10, 2026

Most Americans still do not have an estate plan. In one of the most widely cited national surveys, two thirds of adults reported having no will (Caring.com, 2024). In New York, that gap can turn into court delays, family conflict, and avoidable costs because state rules take over when your wishes are not written down. You will learn what an estate plan includes, why it is important at every age, how the estate planning process typically works, and when to involve an estate planning attorney. We will also cover 2026 trends like digital assets, tighter fraud prevention at banks, and the continued normalization of remote signing workflows where legally permitted. What is estate planning? Estate planning is the legal and practical process

Estate Planning Documents: The 2026 Ultimate Guide To What You Actually Need

Posted on September 9, 2026

Most families do not fail because they do not care. They fail because they never put the right estate planning documents in place before a crisis hits. In the most cited national benchmark, only about one third of US adults have a will (Caring.com, 2024). That gap matters more in 2026 because families are juggling longer lifespans, blended households, digital assets, and more complex healthcare decisions. This guide explains what documents should be included in an estate plan and why each one matters. You will learn the core legal documents, the supporting documents people forget, and how to match them to real life situations like incapacity, long term care, and probate. You will also see common mistakes we regularly fix

Will Vs Trust in 2026: Do You Need a Will or a Trust for Your Estate?

Posted on September 8, 2026

More than half of US adults do not have a will which means many families still face avoidable cost delay and conflict after a death (Caring.com, 2024). In New York that risk can be amplified by high housing values blended families and a growing number of older adults planning for long term care. If you have ever wondered will vs trust you are not alone and the right answer often depends on what you own who you want to protect and how much privacy and control you want during life and after death. In this guide you will learn when a will is enough when a living trust makes sense and how revocable trust planning fits into a modern estate

Pied-a-Terre Means Paying Your “Fair Share”

Posted on August 14, 2026

New York City’s budget is over $120 Billion a year, more than the national budgets of Ireland and Portugal combined. Someone has to pay all these bills, and it may be you. The Pied-a-Terre tax (PAT) – a “second home” tax – was passed on the assumption people owned NYC real estate and probably worked in the City, but since they hated paying NYC income taxes, they bought another home in the Hamptons or the Jersey Shore which they claimed was their actual domicile, thereby minimizing their overall income tax bill. If you have enough money to purchase a second home in New York City: Congratulations, you’ve earned it (or more likely, you inherited it). But if you

No, An NYC Mayor Cannot Create an Estate Tax (But What if He Could?)

Posted on March 27, 2026

No, An NYC Mayor Cannot Create an Estate Tax (But What if He Could?) Last week, in a move that surprised no one who was listening to his campaign promises, the NYC Mayor proposed to decrease New York’s current estate tax exemption from $7,350,000 to $750,000, and increase its highest estate tax rate from 16% to 50%. And while it only took 30 seconds for middle class New Yorkers to realize they were considered the people “not paying their fair share”, it didn’t dawn on them that they have another 3 ¾ years with this guy in charge. Before some of you start succumbing to another bout of Mandami Derangement Syndrome, let me remind you that a Mayor

Hey Expats: Come Home to Get Your Family’s Money

Posted on February 16, 2026

Hey Expats: Come Home to Get Your Family’s Money Despite the flaccid threats of political naysayers who threaten to leave the country after every presidential election (only to realize the United States is a markedly better place to live than countries with poutine, meme bans and gulags), some Americans actually do leave the U.S. on a near permanent basis. These novice ambassadors of American culture do typically maintain their U.S. citizenship for several reasons, some of which have to do with maintaining some financial benefit. But being an expat – or having an expatriated citizen be a beneficiary or fiduciary of your Estate – can lead to a lot of Estate Planning challenges, and post-mortem difficulties that

New York’s Proposed “Right to Die” Law is Lame

Posted on January 8, 2026

New York’s Proposed “Right to Die” Law is Lame We don’t have a choice to be born into this world, and until recently people were not even given the legal right to leave it on our terms. People helplessly watched their mentally competent loved ones physically suffer during their last few months of life with no right to end their pain. And while society’s opinions regarding more liberal end-of-live options changed long ago, countries and states have only recently passed laws regarding a human’s right to face their death on their terms. After a moral grudge match between two diametrically opposed philosophies, in 2025 New York’s assembly finally pushed through a right to die bill, which languished for months,

No Country for Old Men: Don’t Name an Elderly Executor or Trustee

Posted on November 26, 2025

No Country for Old Men: Don’t Name an Elderly Executor or Trustee While I don’t have a lot of new material to share during my first consultation with prospects, a popular one-liner I use is “You’re not old until you are 92.” And while Christie Brinkly will be hotter than your college girlfriend and Chuck Norris will still be kick blasting 2x4s when they are nonagenarians, EVERYONE ELSE in their 90s is OLD. And being elderly and an Executor or Trustee can be a bad combination for both fiduciary and beneficiary alike. In a world where we speak in real time with people 10,000 miles away, transfer millions of dollars with a tap on our cellphone, and travel

ANOTHER Reason Wills are Cruddy: Testamentary Trusts

Posted on September 26, 2025

ANOTHER Reason Wills are Cruddy: Testamentary Trusts Yep, I’m here to bash on New York Probate and Wills again, so if you love large legal fees, Court intervention and long waits for unnecessarily complex services, you may want to start watching your favorite rerun of Better Call Saul now. What would you say if I told you that after going through the many annoyances of Probate you may still be stuck working with the Court for another 20+ years? I’m guessing the words would be colorful, like the post credits scene of that night in college you tried Jello shots. Yes, when you use a Will to protect assets you transfer to other friends and family members, your

TREAT YOURSELF: Order Extra Death Certificates

Posted on August 14, 2025

TREAT YOURSELF: Order Extra Death Certificates Sometimes the only good thing to come from a person’s death is the money they leave to others. So why do so many families get gun shy spending a few extra dollars for what is arguably the most important document of that person’s post-mortem affairs? It’s totally normal, and always to your benefit, to order many more Death Certificates of your departed loved one than you think you will need, preferably sooner rather than later. Death Certificates Transfer Everything Aside from joint accounts, you cannot transfer any property from a deceased person’s assets without a valid (and usually original) Death Certificate. Times you will likely need a Death Certificate to

Pregnant and Brain Dead: How to Make Your Living Will Effective

Posted on June 27, 2025

Pregnant and Brain Dead: How to Make Your Living Will Effective The heart wrenching story of Adriana Smith exhibits both the legal limitations placed on Living Wills, and the impossibility of planning for every potential end of life decision we may have to face. Adriana, aged 30, went from having headaches one day to experiencing deadly blood clots in her brain the next morning, leaving her brain dead. To add to this tragedy, Adriana was well into her first trimester of pregnancy and under Georgia state law could no longer have her life support terminated due to the state’s abortion laws (and no, this article is not going to discuss abortion law, no no no). And while Adriana’s

When Bill Met Jordan: Does Dad Really Need Protection From Himself?

Posted on May 8, 2025

When Bill Met Jordan: Does Dad Really Need Protection From Himself? It sounds like the most exhausting romcom script a Hollywood agent has to read since the script where Adam Sandler tried to date Jennifer Aniston for a seventh movie: Aging, successful NFL coach is on a flight, sits next to college cheerleader, orders her a Cherry Mojito, and every category of “journalist” gets a seat at the dinner table. Cheerleader (starring Jordan Hudson) starts dressing scantily and acting like a boss, Coach (played by Bill I’m-Still-Pinching-Myself Belichick) is allowed to visit her dorm room and stream Netflix and stuff. Tabloids and families shriek “Dad is falling under the spell of Young Girl,” Young Girl exerts more influence, buys

PROTECT YOUR MONEY BY FREEZING YOUR CREDIT NOW

Posted on April 3, 2025

PROTECT YOUR MONEY BY FREEZING YOUR CREDIT NOW Your personal financial information is worth stealing. And it is also worth defending. The unfortunate truth is you cannot stop your identity from being stolen, but you can still protect your credit and money when your identity is stolen. We all go out of our way to defend our Social Security Number and credit card information, we do not answer phone calls from Wichita or Biloxi or Chevy Chase (the place and the person), and we uncontrollably yell at ourselves with crazy eyes in the mirror every time we open an email attachment from a suspicious address. Sadly, while we are doing everything we can to protect our financial information,

Don’t Let Aunt Mildred’s Photo ID Expire

Posted on December 20, 2024

You will need valid photo identification for the remainder of your life. From signing legal documents to opening new bank accounts, government offices and financial organizations require valid picture identification to legally transact business. So it is concerning to learn that most elderly individuals do not have any valid photo ID, and downright frustrating to realize this lack of legal photo identification can cost families tens of thousands of dollars during the last years of their loved ones’ lives. As we age, our photo identification expires and is not renewed for mostly predictable reasons: People no longer plan on traveling so they do not renew their passport, they move in with a family member or to an assisted living

Living Wills in New York May be Useless

Posted on November 14, 2024

There are few rational reasons to having a Living Will in New York, almost no legal benefits to having one, and Living Wills may cause more confusion than guidance in your final days of life. There are several misperceptions concerning what a Living Will actually is. For starters, the very name “Living Will” is a misnomer: It is neither a living document (because it discusses your desire to have someone “pull the plug” on life sustaining measures), nor is it a will (a document which distributes property upon your death). Some people refer to this document as an “Advanced Directive”, but I am pretty sure the Advanced Directive is a Star Trek term regarding Captain Kirk’s alien kissing fetish or

Chadwick Boseman: Why (I Think) He Didn’t Have a Will

Posted on November 25, 2020

We view one measure of the tragedy experienced by another person’s death based on the age they died. So the passing of Chadwick Boseman at age 43 was in some ways more saddening than the recent passing of Sean Connery who was 90 (especially if you also consider Connery’s painfully-candid interview with Barbara Walters which, if you haven’t seen it, may also make you a little less saddened by his passing). Of course, we can also view that level of tragedy by that person’s estate planning, or lack thereof, and the media certainly jumped on the fact Boseman died without a Last Will and Testament. But based on a string of unfortunate circumstances and facts not reported by the media,

Should I Change My Tax Planning Before the Election?

Posted on October 30, 2020

Biden, Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, who will win? Does a “Blue Tide” really mean more taxes on you? And if there is a Democrat trifecta in the Administration and Congress, what are they going to do with taxes? Do you secretly want to see Chris Cuomo fight Tucker Carson in a steel cage match to determine the winner of the 5th Congressional District? What can you do to protect your assets now!??! My take: Who knows, so do not rush to do anything dumb. Betting on who will win elections and basing tax planning on assuming what policies the not-yet-winners will follow has proven time-and-again to be a waste of brain power. Some of the worst tax savings strategies have

On My Second Marriage…with Children from My First

Posted on October 21, 2020

I’ve got news for half of you out there: You are going to get divorced (or are happily already divorced, he didn’t deserve you anyway). Approximately 50% of New York couples I meet have been divorced and most are on their second (and sometimes third) marriage. The desire to take care of one’s spouse, especially the spouse that spent her “golden years” with you sounds fair: While your first spouse was there for you during some of the most active years of your life – i.e. back in the days you could order dessert without blowing up like a balloon – they are not there for your aging years when gravity finally takes its toll out on your physique. But hey: You

Hey, Mom & Dad: No One Wants Your Stuff

Posted on August 7, 2020

No one wants your stuff after you die. Your restored love seat from 1894, your 3rd generation silverware and fine china dining set, your mud-stained Jimi Hendrix t-shirt from the Monterey Pop Festival, these cherished items that gave you cherished memories and a sense of purpose on this planet are little more than garbage and a hinderance in the eye of other people. So why is it some people go to such great lengths to leave certain items of personal property to specific individuals? Case in point: I met with a couple who squabbled amongst one-another how to split up the family artwork. These people were not art collectors, they were average Joes and Janes who on a whim bought stuff

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You Don’t Really Want an Asset Protection Trust

Posted on July 2, 2020

I get a lot of calls from people asking if I can set up an Asset Protection Trust for them. These people usually owe taxes or child support, are contemplating divorce, have recently been the responsible party in an accident or injury to someone else, or anticipate their risky business practices will lead to lawsuits in the future. Despite what they may think, most people in these situations do not want their property owned by an Asset Protection Trust. Asset Protection Trusts are permitted and created in a handful of states (currently 16) such as Delaware, Nevada, Ohio, Alaska and Rhode Island. Trusts created in other states do not have the same level of protection. The idea is that you

Thinking About Divorce? Sign Your Will First

Posted on May 22, 2020

Unless there is a prenuptial agreement stating your husband or wife gets nothing when you pass away, if you are married when you die your spouse often has several rights to your estate. Some states, such as New York, entitle your spouse to at least 1/3 of your gross estate even if you leave them nothing, and if you own property with them jointly they get all of that property when you die. And even worse, if you don’t do any estate planning your spouse may be the sole beneficiary of your estate. So if your marriage is failing I suggest that you fire the first shot at your partner and disinherit them before you file for divorce. For people

Landlords: Beware of Old, Loner Tenants

Posted on April 28, 2020

New York landlords can have a lot of problems with older tenants. Not only do older tenants often have stabilized rents which leave the landlord with a 75% haircut on the rent they collect, older tenants also tend to call in more complaints against their landlords. And just to stick it to their landlord one last time, older tenants often make it impossible for the landlord to re-lease the apartment for months after their deaths. I know, crying for landlords is like crying for the football fan at the Superbowl because he is watching from a luxury box on the 40-yard line instead of the 50 yard line. And I am probably not going to earn a lot of street

Don’t Piss Off Your Trustee

Posted on February 3, 2020

A colleague of mine contacted me about a legal issue she was dealing with. Her client had created an irrevocable trust for tax minimization purposes, named his brother (a US citizen) and his sister-in-law (a Canadian citizen) as Co-Trustees, signed the Trust and transferred a life insurance policy to the Trust. For some reason, in the brief period between signing the trust and mailing it to the Co-Trustees, the client succeeded in royally pissing off his brother to the point of being told he would rather eat cold rice (in actuality, he was told something far less palatable) than serve as his trustee. Just to add to this problem, the client had already applied for a Tax ID Number for

Dead Before His Time: Kobe Bryant and His Possible Estate

Posted on January 27, 2020

I remember being a college student when I first saw the future phenom of the Los Angeles Lakers play for the first time. He was 16 years old, grew up in Italy, seemed like a good kid, and his relentless drive to win was only equaled by his controlled contorting drives to the basket. I lived in Southern California when Kobe, Shaquille O’Neal, and a host of great supporting players won the Threepeat NBA championships of the 2000s. It was a well-known fact that Bryant’s Give-ME-The-Ball style of play, insistence on taking impossible shots and general separation from his colleagues made him incredibly unpopular with his teammates, but he sunk the big shots and the endorsements came pouring in. Kobe

Some of the Many Reasons Estate Attorneys Should NOT Work with Citibank

Posted on January 13, 2020

While I have made sweeping generalizations that corporate trustees will take money from you faster than hitting after you draw 17 in Vegas, it’s pretty rare that I overtly criticize a particular financial institution in my blogs. But since I can’t hide my frustration anymore (and since proving libelous behavior requires a written statement to be untrue, which none of the following is) I feel it is time to send out a warning to my Estate Planning and Elder Law attorney colleagues: Do NOT work with Citibank, and tell your clients not to, for the following reasons: The Inmates Get the Keys to the Asylum: Citibank allows their desk clerks to review your legal documents and make their own assessment

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When “Transfer On Death” Accounts Go Bad

Posted on January 7, 2020

If you have ever had to deal with a complicated or contested Probate over a family member’s Will, you know that a lot of your problems would have been avoided if funds had instead been held in Transfer On Death [“TOD”] accounts: While Probating a Will requires a lot of court paperwork, time, and the cost of paying an attorney to help navigate through the proceeding, TOD accounts transfer as Operation of Law assets, meaning all the beneficiary of the account has to do is show up with an original death certificate. But sometimes TOD accounts are not properly set up, cause confusion or secrecy where none was desired, or end up being transferred to people you don’t want them

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Your Inherited IRA Just Got Nerfed

Posted on December 30, 2019

Every few years the federal government passes last-minute legislation that totally messes up your estate plan. On December 20, 2019 President Trump signed Congress’s “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019” into law. On top of the fact the government paid a 12 year old to sell the rights to his treehouse password in order to create a nitwitty acronym, the “SECURE Act” makes radical changes to how your post-mortem beneficiaries receive your retirement plans that might actually make you feel less secure. When your parent, family or friend dies and leaves you their IRA account you use to receive an “Inherited IRA”, meaning the original owner’s name remained on the account, but the account was change

A Legal Magic Trick: Revoking Irrevocable Trusts

Posted on November 27, 2019

The world changes, and so does our family, friends and charitable organizations. And we do too: We start to care more about relationships than money, health instead of inebriation, and sometimes come to an understanding with those people we disagree with. However, estate planning benefits do not always lend themselves to changed circumstances, so if you want creditor protection, government benefits, estate tax savings or the ability to control your family’s inheritance “from the grave” you usually need an irrevocable trust, I.e. one you cannot change even if you desperately need to change the documents. When you create certain irrevocable trusts, you cannot modify them. These trusts are (typically) either the trustee or the beneficiary but never both; you may

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Getting Divorced? Leave Children’s Life Insurance to a Trust

Posted on November 15, 2019

As a member of the First Spouse Turned Demogorgon Club, I can tell you with hindsight that divorce can be a wonderful thing: No more arguments, no more awkward Thanksgivings with creepy in-laws, no more washing the dishes during prime football hours. But at the same time, divorce is almost never positive during the initial process, self-doubt and anger consumes you, and (ultimately) you will have to deal with financial matters, particularly if you have minor children. And when child support or maintenance is in the picture, your former best friend is going to want to make sure that cool hard cash is still there if you pass away during the payment period. So, purchasing life insurance to cover your

What is a Fair Executor Commission?

Posted on October 25, 2019

When we used to go out to dinner with my grandfather, he would always put some of his food on my plate. It wasn’t that it was cold or not tasty (though his love affair with tripe was engaged in by him and him alone), the thing was that it wasn’t what I had expected, the food that was placed on my plate was not always the part I would have preferred, and it always got entangled with my own eating affairs (I.e. the mash potatoes). Eating other people’s leftovers is often an unsavory task, but it can be about 1 gazillion times more palatable than having to deal with another person’s estate. Sometimes the deceased person was a hoarder

Is There Any Reason NOT to Do a Medicaid Trust in New York?!?!

Posted on September 13, 2019

Many aging individuals appreciate how much work they have done through their lives, how much risk they took, and how they were somehow able to save up enough money to live in retirement for over 20 years. Then, without warning, they have a stroke, or a fall, or are diagnosed with dementia, and it becomes clear to them that their aging health issues can erase their entire net worth in a mere few years. The family then finds out that receiving home care Medicaid is pretty easy, but to protect family assets from Medicaid nursing home care benefits requires you to be indigent for at least 5 years. And (unfortunately by predictably) the family home was never transferred or properly

The Many Risks of “Deathbed” Estate Planning

Posted on August 30, 2019

I can appreciate that planning for your own demise years before your death is not as exciting as planning your next K-Pop karaoke face-off (or any other activity imaginable for that matter). Yet many people fear death so much during their healthy and convalescing periods that they take no estate planning actions whatsoever in the hopes that ignoring this 12,000 pound gorilla will make it just go away. It doesn’t, so many estate planners are – frankly too often – called in during a new client’s final living days to draft their Will, create and fund trusts, or update beneficiary designation forms. These last-ditch “Deathbed” Will signings do not achieve their desired end result an inordinately-high amount of the time

Why Jeffrey Epstein’s Trust Only Adds to the Murder Conspiracy

Posted on August 30, 2019

While America’s criminal justice system does not judge people to be guilty until proven guilty (even though it has no compunction with adjudicating innocent people as being guilty), Jeffrey Epstein sure does look like a bad, bad dude. The “Pimp of the Rich and Famous” would have been charged with human trafficking, statutory rape, prostitution, and likely many more demented crimes which thinking of would cause most decent people to throw up in their mouth a little bit. His trial and any plea bargain could have been an enormous bombshell that would have ruined at least a few people with HUGE shoes to fill. It was in this context that Jeffrey Epstein somehow hung himself from a five-foot high bunkbed

Damian Hurley: Why Minimizing Estate Taxes is Not Always a Good Thing

Posted on July 29, 2019

For decades estate attorneys have been driven by a prime directive, a primary motivating cause that overcomes all other client desires: Minimizing estate taxes. I believe this is a huge mistake, and a recent court decision highlighted by a stern millionaire patriarch, celebrities, a free-living playboy, and an irrevocable trust shows us why. Today it takes a decent amount of money ($11.4 million or more) to face a federal estate tax when you die, and there are also certain irrevocable trusts, including GRATs and GRUTs, that further minimize or eliminate estate taxes. So, for many of us this article is not relevant, but for those who it is, it should come as no surprise that estate attorneys have traditionally focused

Wills: What Do Executors Get Paid in New York?

Posted on July 3, 2019

When your Will is probated your Executor is entitled to receive a commission for their work. And while you can define what that commission is in your Will, most people choose New York’s statutory guideline for that commission (the concern is that if the fee is too low no one will want to be Executor, since you can’t force someone to do the job). In New York, that statute is created by the Surrogate’s Court Procedures Act, Section 2307, and it has a lot of juicy details that differentiate it from other state’s more-streamlined statutory commissions: Keep in mind that any assets which pass through a living trust, a joint account, or assets passing by “operation of law” (such as

Fifteen Common Mistakes – Probate

Posted on July 2, 2019

In February 2019, Dan was privileged enough to contribute a video course for Lawline.com about “Fifteen Common Mistakes, and Simple Suggestions to Avoid Them, for a Future Smooth Probate.” The video is an overview of the fifteen most common mistakes made when estate planning. He will walk through all the potential obstacles an attorney may face if he or she is familiar with drafting wills, but has not yet experienced many of the nuances associated with probate. Topics to be discussed include revoking past wills, fixing mistakes after a will has been executed, general bequests, naming beneficiaries, survivorship provisions, and more. To watch the entire video presentation, please click here. Or below are three clips from the presentation. Importance of

An In-Depth Look at Trusts

Posted on July 2, 2019

In February 2019, Dan was privileged enough to contribute a video course for Lawline.com about “An In-Depth Look at Trusts: Answers to Your Most Commonly Asked Questions” The video is about how Trusts are now the primary way to manage the complexities of government benefits, creditor issues, taxes, and beneficiary protections. Trusts allow us to preserve family assets and do so without court oversight. But what kind of trusts are appropriate in which circumstances? How do we properly title trust accounts and beneficiaries designation forms? And how do we maximize tax deferral, creditor protection, and Medicaid-using trusts? This program, presented by estate planning attorney Daniel Timins, will answer all these questions and more. Additional topics to be discussed include testamentary

What You Can Do Now to Help Your Parents Apply for Medicaid

Posted on June 28, 2019

You may have heard it before: Someone’s elderly parent or grandparent breaks their hip or had a stroke or any one of the thousands of things that can happen to us when we start drinking Ensure for lunch, and now the family needs to apply for Medicaid for that person’s long term care needs. But the family members are having all types of trouble finding the necessary documents that Medicaid requires, such as marriage certificates, identification, proof of Social Security, tax returns, copies of all financial statements, the list is pretty lengthy. So, what can your parents do now to help you apply for Medicaid for them at some point in the future? 1. Draft a Power of Attorney: Having a