I recently came upon this quote by Jonathan Adler, an interior designer, “There is only one game to play at Thanksgiving, and that’s Ping-Pong. It’s perfection – my favorite way to work off that pumpkin pie.”
These are my sentiments exactly.
This clip from You Tube features players who are about as good as I’ve ever seen. I hope they happen to be neighbors of my brother who lives in Kentucky and who is hosting my family’s Thanksgiving Dinner this year. I’d love to have a game or two with them.
Have you ever thought about whom you would invite if you could invite any group of six people to your house for dinner on Saturday? I don’t mean people you know. I mean if you could invite absolutely anyone.
I know my sons, who are teenagers, would invite professional athletes. Somewhere at the table would be sitting Jacoby Ellsbury or Jonathan Papelbon.
In my mom’s case, it would be a Who’s Who of daytime television show hosts. Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters are likely choices.
Special Needs Trusts allow a disabled individual to receive lawsuit settlements, gifts and other funds while retaining eligibility for government programs. They are designed not to provide basic support, but to pay for things like education, recreation, counseling and medical attention.
Special needs can include medical and dental expenses, special equipment (such as vans for the disabled), training and education, insurance, transportation, special dietary needs, spending money, electronic equipment, computers, vacations, movies and payments for a companion.
In her article, Meeting Special Needs and the Need for Peace of Mind, New York Times writer Hillary Chura points out the many advantages to establishing special needs trusts. Ms. Chura writes,
In Amy Hoak’s Wall Street Journal article, “Mortgage Lending for Sellers“, she points out the advantages to both buyers and sellers when a private mortgage is used to purchase a home.
With a private mortgage, the seller or some other interested individual holds the mortgage on the property. There are no bank or mortgage company requirements for the buyer to meet such as a steady income history for the past two years or a particular credit report score. Instead, the buyer and the seller reach their own agreement with their own terms.
Private mortgage income is attractive to sellers who are looking for a steady stream of income and are looking to defer capital gains.
In her article “When it comes to wills, how strange can you get?“, Erline Andrews tells of a woman from Beverly Hills, California who stipulated in her will that she was to be dressed in her favorite nightgown and burried in her Ferrari. There is also the man from Springfield, Oregon who included a provision in his will stipulating that his skin was to be tanned like leather and used to bind a poetry book he had written.
Regardless of the request, there is nothing preventing someone from including that request among the provisions of his will. Whether those provisions are enforceable is another matter. A California court refused to enforce a provision in a will by a woman who ordered that her dog be put down after she died so that the dog would be saved the pain of living on after his beloved owner died. The request violated a law regarding the treatment of animals.
The best advice when deciding what to put in your will is to give the matter a good deal of thought. Give the attorney drafting your will as much information as you can regarding members of your family, all of your assets and how you would like those assets to be distributed in light of all the circumstances you are aware of. The more information you give to your attorney, the more options he can give you to maximize the benefit to those individuals you care most about.
If a husband dies with many unpaid debts, it is often tempting for the surviving wife to want to do nothing regarding opening a probate estate. She may feel that there are more debts than assets, so why get into it. However, there is good reason to pursue probating an insolvent estate.
The Illinois Probate Act addresses the situation where the debts and claims of an estate exceed the estate’s assets.
At Section 18-13 of the Probate Act, a determination of the priority of payment is set out. That Section provides that the estate shall pay all claims in order of their classification. The classification of claims is provided in Section 18-10 and reads as follows:
A 2007 case from New York, In the Matter of Martin B., 17 Misc. 3d 198; 841 N.Y.S.2d 207 (N.Y. Surr.; 2007) involves a man who was married, had no children, and before he died, donated his semen to a laboratory. The man’s father made provisions in a trust for all of his issue and descendants. Years after the son died, the son’s widow underwent in vitro fertilization and gave birth to two boys, both conceived with the semen from her deceased husband.
The issue arose as to whether these two grandchildren, born after their father’s death but conceived with his semen, were considered descendants under the terms of the trust established by the grandfather.
The New York court held as follows:
Illinois Estate Planning and Elder Law Blog