Articles Posted in Estate Planning

When an adult can no longer make decisions, whether from a stroke, advancing dementia, a serious accident, or another loss of capacity, someone still has to pay the bills, manage the property, and make medical choices. If that person planned ahead, a trusted agent steps in quietly. If they did not, the alternative is guardianship:…

For several years, families who inherited an IRA or a 401(k) got a reprieve from a confusing distribution rule while the IRS worked out the details. That reprieve has ended. Starting with the 2025 tax year, the inherited IRA 10-year rule is being enforced as written, and the penalty relief that applied from 2021 through…

Most people now keep a meaningful part of their lives online: email, photographs, bank and brokerage logins, social media, cloud storage, and increasingly digital currency. Far fewer have thought about what happens to those accounts if they die or lose the ability to manage their own affairs. Indiana answers that question through a statute on…

A federal tax law signed in the summer of 2025 changed the numbers that drive estate tax planning, and the headlines that followed left many Indiana families wondering whether their own plans need attention. The short answer for most Hoosier households is reassuring, though it carries a caution worth understanding. The One Big Beautiful Bill…

Few things frustrate Indiana families more than presenting a valid power of attorney to a bank and being told it will not be accepted. The refusal typically comes at a moment of genuine need, when a parent has been hospitalized or a spouse can no longer manage accounts independently. Instead of cooperation, the agent is…

An Indiana transfer-on-death deed can keep real estate out of probate, and for many families that is exactly the right tool. The problem is that a transfer-on-death deed used in isolation, without fitting it into the rest of the estate plan, often creates gaps that surface only after someone has died. At that point, the…

When a family trust reaches the administration phase, beneficiaries usually care about two things right away. They want to know what assets exist, and they want to know where the money went. An Indiana estate planning attorney will tell you that trustee accounting disputes rarely start with dramatic accusations. They start with missing documentation, unclear…

Indiana estate planning often changes quietly through code cleanups and committee work, then the practical impact shows up later when a family needs a guardianship, a trust administration, or a probate filing on a short timeline. Attorney Burton Padove sees the real-world side of this process, where a plan that looked fine years ago now…

Probate and trust administration in Indiana can feel routine until a filing is rejected, a hearing is continued, or a family learns that a county has its own procedural requirements. State statutes set the framework, yet local court rules often control the day-to-day mechanics that determine whether a matter moves smoothly. A missed requirement can…

Financial institutions have tightened their verification and authentication procedures following several well-publicized fraud incidents between 2024 and 2025. These policy shifts now influence how personal representatives, surviving spouses, and agents under powers of attorney access accounts after a customer dies. Indiana families may notice that tasks which once required a simple set of documents now…