Explore top estate planning resources and find lawyers in your area. LDS connects you with trusted estate attorneys for wills, trusts, probate, powers of attorney, guardianship, elder law, and tax-savvy asset protection—so your legacy transfers smoothly and your family avoids costly mistakes. Browse our plain-English guides, checklists, and local lawyer profiles.
Search for Top Rated Estate Planning Lawyers Near You
Latest in Estate Planning
-
Special Needs Trusts 101: Protecting Benefits While Funding a Loved One’s Future
Families do extraordinary things for loved ones with disabilities. The law will meet you halfway—if you use the right tools in the right order. A Special Needs Trust (SNT) can hold money for a beneficiary with a disability without costing them means-tested benefits like SSI and Medicaid, provided the trust satisfies very specific statutory and…
-
Beneficiary Designations: The Most Overlooked (and Most Dangerous) Part of Your Plan
Everyone obsesses over the will or trust. Fewer people review the boring one-page forms that actually move the money. Beneficiary designations—on retirement plans, IRAs, life insurance, brokerage accounts (TOD), and bank accounts (POD)—are contracts that usually control who gets paid, regardless of your will. When they’re wrong or outdated, they can wreck an otherwise perfect…
-
The 2026 Estate-Tax Sunset Explained: Exemptions, Gifting Now, and Portability
When Congress doubled the federal estate and gift tax exemption for 2018–2025, it set a timer. Absent new legislation, that higher “basic exclusion amount” sunsets after December 31, 2025 and reverts on January 1, 2026 to the pre-2018 level of $5 million, indexed for inflation (widely modeled to land roughly in the $6–7 million range).…
-
Avoiding Probate: 9 Legal Tools That Keep Your Family Out of Court
If you’ve seen probate up close, you know the drill: public filings, waiting periods, creditor notices, and the creeping sense that this could have been simpler. The good news is that, in most states, an organized plan can move a large share of your assets outside the court process entirely. Below are nine widely used,…
-
Will vs. Trust in Plain English: Which One Do You Actually Need?
If you’ve ever wondered whether you need a will or a revocable living trust, you’re not alone. Both documents direct who inherits your property, yet they work in different ways at different times. In plain English: a will speaks only after death and generally goes through probate (a court-supervised process); a revocable living trust (RLT)…
All Practice Areas
-
Monthly Legal Headlines — February 2026
Date Published: February 8, 2026 FTC Issues Second Report to Congress on its Work to Fight Ransomware and other Cyberattacks Date: February 6, 2026 Source: FTC Press Releases The Federal Trade Commission issued a second report to Congress detailing the agency’s efforts to fight against ransomware and other cyberattacks.View Press Release Why it matters: disclosure…
-
Monthly Legal Headlines — December 2025
Date Published: December 19, 2025 Federal Reserve Board publishes its biennial report on debit card transactions, which summarizes information collected from large debit card issuers and payment card networks Date: December 19, 2025 Source: Federal Reserve Press Releases Federal Reserve Board publishes its biennial report on debit card transactions, which summarizes information collected from large…
-
Top U.S. Legal Headlines — October 27, 2025
Date Published: October 27, 2025 Federal Reserve Board requests comment on proposals to enhance the transparency and public accountability of its annual stress test Date: October 24, 2025 Source: Federal Reserve Press Releases Federal Reserve Board requests comment on proposals to enhance the transparency and public accountability of its annual stress test Federal Reserve and…