The important legal documents every family needs

Estate & Tax Attorney, Sonja Panajotovic, shares advice for parents on the legal documents that they must or should have in order to sort out a number of personal and estate issues
The Important Legal Documents Every Family Needs
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The important legal documents every family needs

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The key documents for a family to have are; the Living Trust, the Pour-Over Wills, the Advanced Healthcare Directives, Durable Powers of Attorney, and also, the documents transferring the assets into a trust. For example, a trust transfer deed, transferring the house into the trust; instruction letters, notifying the banks that the assets should be titled in the trust. The Advanced Healthcare Directive is important because it lays out exactly who you want to make healthcare decisions for you and let's your agent knows what your wishes are for organ donation or life support. Those kind of topics are covered in the Advanced Healthcare Directive. The Pour-Over Will deals with issues of guardianship and issues of assets that weren't properly transferred into the trust. It lets the trustee have control over those assets as well. The Durable Power of Attorney is a document specifically for finances that allows the person who you've selected to handle your financial affairs, in the event that you are incapacitated and can't handle those affairs for yourself.

Estate & Tax Attorney, Sonja Panajotovic, shares advice for parents on the legal documents that they must or should have in order to sort out a number of personal and estate issues

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Sonja Panajotovic

Estate & Tax Attorney

In 1992, Ms. Panajotovic graduated from University of Colorado, Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration/Finance and with multiple honors as a scholar/athlete (tennis) and honored as Academic All Big Eight, and Scholar Athlete of the year. She earned her law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law and graduated Cum Laude, was an Associate Editor for the Law Review, and on the Dean’s List, and began her legal career as a law clerk for Magistrate Judge Margaret A. Nagle, United States District Court, Los Angeles, and as an associate at the prestigious law firm of Brobeck Phleger & Harrison LLP.

Sonja Panajotovic’s estate planning services include the preparation of documents ranging from simple wills to advanced health care directives, asset transfers and living trusts. She also counsels many of her clients on the various types of trusts such as the marital deduction trust, special needs trusts, Q-TIP trusts, and charitable remainder trusts and helps her clients coordinate their trusts with their overall estate planning needs.

 Her probate and estate practice is also designed to provide full legal services to personal representatives of decedent's estates, trustees, and guardians/conservators for minors or incapacitated adults, including all proceedings in the probate court. She aids her clients with estate and trust administration to efficiently transfer assets from decedent's trusts or estates to intended beneficiaries at death.

Guardianship, Wills and Trusts
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