Estate Planning Smarts: A Practical, User-Friendly, Action-Oriented Guide, 4th Edition

"A terrific guide for people who are just beginning to grapple with estate planning, as well as those who have (or think they have) their affairs in order." --The Wall Street Journal

Written by a lawyer, award-winning journalist and popular speaker. A free update, reflecting the 2017 tax law, is available at estateplanningsmarts.com.

No one lives forever. So why leave anything to chance? This best-selling book can help you tackle a potentially difficult and very emotional process. In plain English, it explains:
When to re-do your will
Mistakes people make when trying to avoid probate
Rules for IRA inheritors
How to hire a lawyer
Key documents to protect yourself if you become ill or disabled
How to appoint a guardian for children
How custodial accounts and 529 plans affect financial aid
The fourth edition, which replaces earlier editions, is completely revised to include how income taxes affect estate planning, the pros and cons of credit shelter trusts and the law on planning for same-sex couples. Celebrity case studies illustrate estate planning strategies and mistakes by, among others: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, James Gandolfini, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Updike and Adam Yauch.

Placed in the 2017 Eric Hoffer Awards.

Deborah L. Jacobs is a lawyer and award-winning journalist who has written about everything from travel to taxes. In Estate Planning Smarts, now in the fourth edition, she draws on 17 years of writing about the stressful issues that surround estate planning. Her articles for The New York Times, Bloomberg Wealth Manager, Forbes, BusinessWeek and many other publications have been widely cited and circulated by both advisers and consumers. Readers appreciate her clear, concise explanations of complex subjects and her ability to combine real-life stories with reassuring, practical advice. A former senior editor at Forbes and a dynamic speaker, she has also been interviewed as an expert by reporters from many different media outlets, including The New York Times, Bloomberg News, Reuters, U.S. News & World Report, MarketWatch and CBS TV. To keep readers current between editions, Jacobs issues updates that can be downloaded from her book's Web site and tweets @djworking. Her new book, Four Seasons in a Day: Travel, Transitions and Letting Go of the Place We Call Home, confronts mortality in a different way. It chronicles her misadventures after she decided that life is too short, quit an editorial job and planned to Airbnb her way through France. For details, search Amazon books by title and author.