Post Mortem Issues Archives - Law Offices of Daniel Timins

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

Don’t Die Alone in Your Apartment

Posted on October 3, 2024

Few of us choose when we die, but where we die can raise difficult legal consequences. Your family may face legal hardships when you die alone at home. If you are the sole resident of your home and die in the home alone, several parties – including the local police – show up to remove your body and “police tape” your front door. This is the equivalent of having yellow and black “Crime Scene” tape around your home. Once this happens, if your family enters your home they could face criminal charges. While the authorities will take steps to safeguard your pets, everything else in your home – from your jewelry and personal belongings to prescription drugs – are just

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

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

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

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

Unsigned Wills Are Meaningless (and Photocopies are Not Much Better)

Posted on April 10, 2019

I like to remind people that the laws regarding modern U.S. Wills, not only predate the founding of the U.S., but actually predate European discovery of the Western Hemisphere. In Olde England in the city of York having a signed, witnessed piece of paper instructing how you wanted your property to be distributed after your death was often the only way to ensure your desires were fulfilled. Original paper mattered back then – there were no other recording devices or accounts with beneficiary designations – and witnesses would later attest to the fact they had seen you sign said paper instead of someone else. And original, signed paper still matters for several legal documents today, including your Will. The issue

Requiem for Stan Lee: Superhero of the Superheroes

Posted on November 15, 2018

As a former collector of Bronze-Age Marvel comic books, I was sad to hear of the passing of Stan Lee. As the creator or co-creator of so many comic book characters – the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Spider Man, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Uncanny X-Men, Doctor Strange, the list goes on – Lee is one of the most meaningful entertainment influencers of our era. True, Lee owed a great debt to his prolific co-creators (and arguably more talented artists), such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, but even though Lee’s style often promoted himself instead of Marvel and anyone else that made Marvel Comics the cultural juggernaut it has become, everyone from once-teenage comic collectors, to Disney executives

Angry Brothers Agree to Settle (Mom’s Estate)

Posted on October 5, 2018

You never know how close you are to your family until you have to share an inheritance with them. I am wrapping-up a case where my client’s mother died, leaving a Will that equally-distributed her real estate between her two somewhat-acrimonious sons. Usually this apartment would be sold, proceeds disbursed, and everyone would go their separate way. However, my client’s brother insisted that he could make them more money if he improved the real estate. His brother (my client) was not so hip on this idea – none of them had any real estate investing experience – but through sheer force, perseverance and presumption his brother had his own son move in (which he did – with a few kewl