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Mental Health Awareness Month: How an Estate Plan Can Help Improve Anxiety
May 10th, 2023
Roughly one in five US adults experiences a mental illness each year. Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health conditions, affecting nearly one-third of adults at some point in their lives. While anxiety can be generalized and chroni…
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Categories: Burial Plans, Estate Planning, Guardianship, Health Care Surrogates, Living Will, Powers of Attorney, Trusts, Wills
Aaron Carter: A Life Gone Too Soon
April 12th, 2023
Musician Aaron Carter, a former child pop star and younger brother of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter, died last November at the age of thirty-four. Aaron’s untimely passing is one of the more tragic celebrity deaths of 2022. It is also one of t…
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Does the Guardian for My Child Have to Be a United States Citizen?
December 27th, 2022
One of the more uncomfortable aspects of estate planning is deciding what will happen to your child if both you and the child’s other legal parent were to die unexpectedly. While the odds of this happening are low, the consequences of not naming a…
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Categories: Guardianship
Guardianships: Valuable Lessons from the Britney Spears Conservatorship
September 20th, 2021
Most everyone at some point over the past several months has heard something about Britney Spears’s conservatorship and her battles with her father, who has been serving as her conservator. Conservators, commonly called guardians in Texas and F…
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Categories: Guardianship
Alternatives to Guardianship
September 24th, 2018
Because guardianship involves a profound loss of freedom and dignity, state laws require that guardianship be imposed only when less restrictive alternatives have been tried and proven to be ineffective. ore importantly, and of the alternatives below…
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Categories: Guardianship
Tags: Florida
Guardianship Process
September 7th, 2018
Picking up from last week in this three-part series, this post covers the guardianship process. Key points are the complexity involved (this involves the court system) and the ongoing reporting requirements. Remembering some basic points of guardians…
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Categories: Guardianship
Tags: Florida
Basic Principles in Guardianship (a series)
August 31st, 2018
This is the first post in a series about guardianship. Over the next couple of weeks, look for two follow-ups that will further explains what’s behind this area of law. Guardianship Basics Every adult is assumed to be capable of making his or h…
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Categories: Guardianship
Tags: Florida
Guardianship, Hippos, and #notallfoxes: Thoughts from John Oliver (and Others)
July 18th, 2018
Sitting in my office this week, I had the opportunity to watch a clip from HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He provided an explanation of how guardianship works, with a frank discussion of the possible scary implications. Of course, be…
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Can We Talk? Having the Needed Conversations with Potential Guardians
February 8th, 2017
Estate planning is more than making choices. It is also about having conversations with those people you select to act for you in case of your death or disability—personal representatives, powers of attorney, and guardians, to name a few. A lot of…
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Tags: Florida
How to Select Guardians for Your Minor Children
May 3rd, 2016
Appointing a guardian for minor children is one of the most important and challenging decisions that parents face. If you’ve been avoiding the issue, it’s time to take the leap. A thorough, properly drafted estate plan is the best way to…
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Categories: Guardianship
Tags: Florida
Attorney Jana McCreary
Houston Estate Planning Attorney Jana R. McCreary has been an attorney for over twenty years, a career move she made after working for over a decade with adults and children with intellectual disabilities and mental illness. Graduating summa cum laud… Read More