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Unlike many estate assets, if you’re looking to collect the proceeds of a life insurance policy, the process is fairly simple provided you’re named as the beneficiary. That said, following a loved one’s death, the whole world can feel like it’s falling apart, and it’s helpful to know exactly what steps need to be taken to access the insurance funds as quickly and easily as possible during this trying time.

And if you’ve been dependent on the deceased for regular financial support and/or are responsible for paying funeral expenses, the need to access insurance proceeds can sometimes be downright urgent.

Here, we’ve outlined the typical procedure for claiming and collecting life insurance proceeds, along with discussing how beneficiaries can deal with common hiccups in the process. However, because all life insurance policies are different and some involve more complexities than others, it’s always a good idea to consult with a Personal Family Lawyer® if you need extra help or guidance.

To start the life insurance claims process, you first need to identify who the beneficiary of the life insurance policy is—are you the beneficiary, or is a trust set up to handle the claim for you?

We often recommend that life insurance proceeds be paid to a trust, not outright to a beneficiary. This way, the life insurance proceeds can be used by the beneficiary, but the funds are protected from lawsuits and/or creditors that the beneficiary may be involved with—even a future divorce.

In the event that a trust is the beneficiary, contact us so that we can create a certificate of trust that you (or the trustee, if the trustee is someone other than you) can send to the life insurance company, along with a death certificate when one is available.

In any case, you (or the trustee) will notify the insurance company of the policyholder’s death, either by contacting a local agent or by following the instructions on the company’s website. If the policy was provided through an employer, you may need to contact their workplace first, and someone there will put you in touch with the appropriate representative.

Many insurance companies allow you to report the death over the phone or by sending in a simple form and not require the actual death certificate at this stage. Depending on the cause of death, it can sometimes take weeks for the death certificate to be available, so this simplified reporting speeds up the process.

From there, the insurance company typically sends the beneficiary (or the trustee of the trust named as beneficiary) more in-depth forms to fill out, along with further instructions about how to proceed. Some of the information you’re likely to be asked to provide during the claims process include the deceased’s date of birth, date and place of death, their Social Security number, marital status, address, as well as other personal data.

Your state’s vital records office creates the death certificate, and it will either send the certificate directly to you or route it through your funeral/mortuary provider. Once you’ve received a certified copy of the death certificate, you’ll send it to the insurance company, along with the other completed forms requested.

If more than one adult beneficiary was named, each person should provide his or her own signed and notarized claim form. If any of the primary beneficiaries died before the policyholder, an alternate/contingent beneficiary can claim the proceeds, but he or she will need to send in the death certificates of both the policyholder and the primary beneficiary.

While policyholders are free to name anyone as a beneficiary, when minor children are named, it creates serious complications, as most insurance companies will not allow a minor child to receive life insurance benefits directly until they reach the age of majority. And the age of majority varies between states—with some it’s 18, and others it’s 21.

If a child is named as a beneficiary and has yet to reach the age of majority, the claim proceeds will be paid to the child’s legal guardian, who will be responsible for managing those funds until the child comes of age. Given this, in the event a minor is named you’ll need to go to court to be appointed as legal guardian, even if you’re the child’s parent. This is why we recommend never naming a minor child as a life insurance beneficiary, even as a backup to the primary beneficiary.

Rather than naming a minor child as a life insurance beneficiary, it’s often better to set up a trust to receive the proceeds. By doing that, the proceeds would be paid into the trust, and whomever is named as trustee will follow the steps above to collect the insurance benefits, put them in the trust, and manage the funds for the child’s benefit.

Whatever you decide, you should consult with us as your Personal Family Lawyer® to determine the best options for passing along your life insurance benefits and other assets to minor children.

Provided you fill out the forms properly and include a certified copy of the death certificate, insurance companies typically pay out life insurance claims quickly. In fact, some claims are paid within one-to-two weeks of the start of the process, and rarely do claims take more than 60 days to be paid. Most insurance companies will offer you the option to collect the proceeds via a mailed check or transfer the funds electronically directly to your account.

Sometimes an insurance company will request you to send in a completed W-9 form (Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification) from the IRS in order to process a claim. Most of the time, a W-9 is requested only if there is some question or issue with the records, such as having an address provided in a claim form that doesn’t match the one on file.

A W-9 is simply a way for the insurance company to verify information to prevent fraudulent activity. To this end, don’t be alarmed if you’re asked for a W-9. It’s a common verification practice, and it doesn’t automatically mean the company suspects you of fraud or plans to deny your claim.

While collecting life insurance proceeds is a fairly simple process, it’s always a good idea to consult with us as your Personal Family Lawyer® if you have any questions or need help to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible during the often-chaotic period following a loved one’s death.

We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That’s why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session, ™ during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before, and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge. Schedule online today.

A comprehensive estate plan can protect the things that matter most. For many, this means their property and their family.

Including provisions for the care of your children in your estate plan is essential for peace of mind. But many parents struggle with including such provisions as naming a legal guardian for their child in their plan. Indeed, even the fictional parents in the popular television sitcom Modern Family struggled with this issue in a recent episode. While Jay and his new and much younger wife Gloria agonized and argued about who they should name as a legal guardian for their children, their children were left at risk that if something happened to Jay and Gloria before they decided and properly named guardians in a legal document, a judge would make the decision for them. Not ideal, under any circumstances.

When naming a legal guardian for your minor children, there are many factors to consider, such as whether the guardian has similar values to yours or can provide a welcoming home environment. But the toughest decisions are often the most important. Consider the outcome if you died without having legal protections for your children in place. Your children could be subject to conflict between relatives or they could be raised by someone you would never want, or in a way you wouldn’t want.  They could even temporarily be taken into the care of strangers.

Identifying and naming a legal guardian for your children in your estate plan is a difficult and important task. Don’t put off naming a legal guardian for your child. While thinking about what will happen to your child if you die is difficult even for fictional parents, your kids deserve the protection and you deserve the peace of mind that a legal guardian can provide.

Unfortunately, even if you have made the hard decisions and worked with a lawyer to name legal guardians in a Will, your kids could still be at risk, because that would not take into account what happens if you become incapacitated, or if your named guardians all live far from your home, and it wouldn’t protect against anyone who may challenge your decisions. The only way to ensure your kids are raised by the people you want, in the way you want, never taken into the care of strangers (even temporarily) and that your kids would never be raised by anyone you wouldn’t want, is by creating a comprehensive Kids Protection Plan®, which only a select few lawyers, like us, are trained to prepare.

If you are ready to take that step, start by sitting down with us. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can walk you step by step through creating a comprehensive Kids Protection Plan® that not only names a legal guardian for your child in your Will, but also ensures your kids care is fully provided for, in the short-term and the long-term, and in the event of your incapacity.

Working with a trusted Personal Family Lawyer® will ensure your entire family is protected and cared for no matter what. Contact us today to get started!

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.

Realizing that your biggest personal and business expense, bar none, is taxes can be quite a shock. Indeed, seeing so much of your hard-earned money end up in the government’s hands can feel like a shakedown. Fortunately, focusing just a little time and effort on strategically reducing your taxes can pay huge dividends.

The first thing to note is that it’s not illegal to implement strategies to save on your taxes. Many people shy away from using creative tax strategies because they’re worried it’s going to get them in trouble. But as long as you do things correctly, strategizing to pay the least amount of taxes possible is neither against the law or otherwise risky in any way.

That said, it is illegal to evade taxes. As Martin Ginsburg (Georgetown Law professor and husband of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) likes to say, “Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.” You want to be smart, but not greedy. And since right now is the most important time of year for tax strategy, this two-part series will discuss ways you can get fat, but not slaughtered.

The first step you should take to save big on your taxes is to build or rekindle your relationship with your team of financial professionals. These individuals will establish the foundation needed to develop and implement your tax-saving strategies. At the least, this team should include a bookkeeper/financial manager and a tax advisor (Certified Public Accountant or Enrolled Agent).

If your bookkeeper’s job is more about data entry than financial management, you should look for someone new—or quickly get your current staff trained and up to speed. An effective financial manager will be managing your books on a week-to-week basis (if not daily, depending on your business). Note I said “week-to-week,” not month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter.

You financial manager’s responsibilities should include daily/weekly cash-flow management, monthly review of reports and categorization of expenses, and quarterly updates of your forecast and projections.

Your tax advisor is the individual who actually files your taxes. Ideally, you should meet with him or her at least twice a year, once in May/June (after tax season) and once in October/November (approaching year’s end).

The May/June meeting is a general catch-up, mid-year review that lets your tax advisor know what you’re financially on track to do for the year, allowing him or her to start considering an effective strategy.

When you meet again in October/November, that’s when you’ll really get down to business. You’ll project cash flow through the end of the year and get a tax estimate using different assumptions both with and without tax-saving strategies included.

If your tax advisor cannot provide this level of service and is merely a tax filer, it’s time to find a new advisor. We can help you with that, so contact us today if you realize you need a creative tax advisor who’s capable of handling such things. And for many of our clients, we meet regularly with them and their financial management team to ensure their financial strategies are supported with legal implementation. If you’d like to consider how we may be able to support you in this way, contact us.

In the next part of this series, we’ll discuss how to best develop and implement the creative strategies you need to keep more of your money in your hands and out of the government’s. Until then, contact us if you have any questions about what you can do to reduce your upcoming tax bill.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.

One of the most challenging aspects of running a business is effectively managing staff conflict. Dealing with people and personalities is vastly different than most of your other duties, where the goal is comparatively straightforward and simply requires talent and time to achieve.

Though good management can go a long way toward preventing many disputes, conflicts will inevitably arise due to the inherently tense nature of the workplace—differences in values and viewpoints, poor communication, personality clashes, and unhealthy competition.

Without a solid process in place for effectively handling staff conflict, both morale and productivity can decline to the point where your company falls apart. The following five steps provide a solid framework for effectively neutralizing employee conflict before a petty dispute turns into total chaos.

As a small business owner trying to grow your company, the last thing you probably want to deal with is resolving a minor employee disagreement. But ignoring a problem in hopes it will work itself out is asking for trouble. Many times, seemingly trivial disputes can fester and grow until they infect the entire company from within.

It’s vital that you deal with any conflict as soon as you become aware of it and take solid steps to resolve it. Not only can small disputes snowball into major ones, but if everyone on your team knows there’s a problem and you aren’t dealing with it, you’ll lose respect as a leader. Besides, the sooner you address a conflict, the easier it’ll be to fix.

If you’ve caught the issue soon enough, it should be fairly easy to identify what the conflict is really about. But it can sometimes be difficult to get to the heart of the matter even in the early stages, especially if it involves staff who’ve frequently butted heads in the past.

Given this, you should first get the parties to agree on what the dispute is actually about by allowing them to share their perspective on the issue. You need to identify what needs aren’t being met on both sides and make sure there’s mutual understanding. Listen carefully to both parties and sort out the facts of the dispute, without making any judgements.

Avoid any unrelated issues not directly connected to the conflict at hand, and do your best to remove excess emotion from the situation.

Conflicts are rarely black and white. There are numerous shades of grey, particularly when it comes to communication and social interaction, particularly as our workforce becomes more culturally and generationally diverse.

It’s best to acknowledge that we all have different opinions and points of view, and while it’s fine to disagree with someone, you can’t let that disagreement turn into a major conflict. If the issue can be framed as nothing more than differing opinions, it’s typically easier to reach a positive outcome.

As much as possible, try to get each side to understand and respect the other’s point of view, even if they’re completely opposite one another. By getting the parties to put themselves in the other’s shoes, it sets the stage for enhanced negotiation and resolution.

When the conflict has been clearly identified and each side has expressed their views, come up with a shared goal to work towards for resolving the issue. Discuss what each side would like to see happen, and then find common ground between those two positions upon which to start, even if that commonality is merely that they both want to end the conflict.

Try to work toward a resolution that’s a win-win for both parties, with each side giving a little to get a little. Be creative in searching for solutions, and allow the parties to help you brainstorm potential outcomes. Develop mutually acceptable criteria for evaluating these solutions, and work from there until you can find a compromise that’s acceptable.

That said, as the company’s owner, you’re the ultimate judge and jury. So if the parties aren’t able to work together, tell them as much and make the decision on your own. You’ll inevitably find some people are simply too proud or insecure to work honestly through a personal conflict.

It’s no secret that Bitcoin and other brands of cryptocurrency are one of the hottest new investment opportunities.  And if you’re not already invested, you may be considering how to get in, what exactly is the best way to get in, and you should definitely be considering risks and potential scams that are easy to get caught by if you’re not eyes wide open on the issues surrounding cryptocurrency. But what are the cryptocurrency risks and scams you should worry about?

Launched in 2009, Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and since then, it has evolved from something only computer geeks and hackers talked about into a global phenomenon that’s transformed how the entire world views money.

Bitcoin is still the most popular—and valuable—digital currency. As of November 2017, a single Bitcoin was worth more than $10,000, with the currency’s total market capitalization at roughly $158 billion.  Bitcoin’s smashing success spawned a legion of other coins, known as “altcoins,” such as Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, and the global market value for all cryptocurrency is currently more than $300 billion.

The huge amounts of money transitioning into the world of cryptocurrency has attracted equally large numbers of investors, looking to tap into this seemingly boundless source of new money. However, because it’s largely unregulated, involves extremely complex technology, and offers significant anonymity, the cryptocurrency market has also garnered the attention of cyber criminals.

Indeed, cryptocurrency’s brief history is filled with stories of people losing major money through hacking and a variety of other traps and scams. As with any new investment opportunity, the key to safety with cryptocurrency is education. While you should always do your own research before investing, here are a few of the most common scams to watch for and how to know whether investing in or using cryptocurrency is right for you.