HOLLY

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer This happens far more than it should. You signed a Power of Attorney (POA), named someone you trust, and filed it away with your important documents. You felt the quiet relief of having that handled. But here’s what most families don’t discover until they’re already in a crisis: a perfectly valid […]

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer You fall in love later in life. You marry. You start over. Then your spouse dies suddenly. Before you have time to grieve, the family starts fighting, the locks get changed, the mail stops arriving, and the basic stability of your life begins to slip away. Without the right legal planning,

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer Tax season just made you look at your financial life honestly. All of it. Tax season forced it. You gathered documents, tracked down account statements, reviewed what you own and what you owe. Right now, in April, you are more financially clear-headed than you will be at almost any other moment

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer After you’re gone, your family won’t just be grieving. They’ll be making phone calls, hunting down accounts, and navigating a legal process that no one told them about. That’s the part that can quietly drag on for years, no matter how much or how little you have. And a story that’s

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer You probably assume that if something happened to you, the other parent would step in and everything would work itself out. In many families, that’s true. But not always. Real life is messy. Parents separate. Relationships become contentious. Custody disputes drag on for years. And when a tragedy occurs in the

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer Estate Planning for Unmarried Couples: Protecting the Person You Love You and your partner have built something real together. Maybe you share a home, split the bills, and have been each other’s go-to person for years. In every way that matters, you’re family. The problem is, the law doesn’t see it

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer If you are in a blended family, you may believe the simplest estate plan is the fairest one: “I’ll leave everything to my spouse. They’ll take care of my kids.” That approach often works in a first and only marriage. If you and your spouse share the same biological or adopted

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer Here’s What Happens to Your Retirement Accounts After You Die Retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs often represent the single largest category of wealth for U.S. families. According to recent data, retirement funds in these accounts alone total roughly $21 trillion, and for many households, they compose over 34% of average

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer Why Quick and Simple Estate Plan Reviews Don’t Exist When someone calls an estate planning attorney asking for a “quick look” at their documents, the request usually sounds straightforward. Maybe the documents were created using an online service and they want to “just be sure” the documents are sound. Perhaps there’s

By: Attorney Holly Ziemer When planning for your death, there’s one issue you may not have thought about but is so important to your beneficiaries: will your loved ones have to pay taxes on what you leave them? The answer isn’t straightforward because it depends largely on the types of assets you’re passing down, how