Wishes and instructions for your children after you die

Tax & Estate Attorney Stefanie Lipson on how to specify certain wishes for how their child is going to be raised once they are no longer around to watch over them for themselves
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Wishes and instructions for your children after you die

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I often work with clients who want to specify certain wishes for how their child is going to be raised once they are no longer around to watch over them for themselves. These are really personal issues and it really ranges from person to person. Some examples are, often people want to provide for continuity in the child's life. Perhaps they ask that the guardian move into the family home and continue to raise the child in the family's own home, so the child is not uprooted. Same thing with school and extracurricular activities, making sure that the child can have a continuity in their life and not be uprooted from their normal every day schedule after the loss of their parents. Something else to think about, especially in families of mixed faith, how you would want your child to be brought up from a religious standpoint. Also, when you are appointing one family member, for example, grandparents on one side of the family as guardians, making sure that the other family gets to stay involved in the child's life, if that's consistent with what's been happening during the parent's life. Most often, these instructions are really just about providing continuity for how the parents would have raised the child themselves if they were still around.

Tax & Estate Attorney Stefanie Lipson on how to specify certain wishes for how their child is going to be raised once they are no longer around to watch over them for themselves

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Stefanie Lipson

Estate & Tax Attorney

Stefanie J. Lipson is an attorney in the Family Wealth Planning Group of Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman, & Machtinger, LLP.  Stefanie’s practice focuses on comprehensive estate planning for high net worth individuals, family business succession planning, probate and trust administration and the law of tax exempt organizations.  Stefanie counsels her clients with a holistic approach to wealth transfer solutions, structuring plans to meet a family’s individual needs while addressing the complex estate, gift and income tax implications of wealth transfer.  In addition, consistent with Stefanie’s belief that the most effective estate planning begins early, Stefanie has developed an estate planning program designed specifically to meet the planning needs of young families as they encounter common life events. 

Stefanie’s unique approach and application of Trust and Estate law has been well acknowledged by the legal community.  She served as a panelist at the 2010 Southern California Tax and Estate Planning Forum in a discussion involving multijurisdictional issues in estate planning and has authored publications for The Los Angeles Daily Journal and The Recorder.  Stefanie has been listed in Southern California Rising Stars each year since 2009.

Stefanie received her Bachelor of Arts in 2003 from University of California Los Angeles, graduating magna cum laude with the distinction of departmental honors and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  Stefanie received her J.D. from the University of Southern California Law Center in 2006.  Following her graduation from USC, Stefanie clerked for the Honorable Fred Keiser, Jr. in the New Jersey Superior Court, Family Law Division.  During her time with the court, Stefanie also served as a court appointed mediator for small claims civil matters. 

In furtherance of her estate planning work, Stefanie is currently pursuing a Master of Laws in Taxation (LL.M.) from New York University School of Law.  Stefanie’s studies at NYU focus on estate, gift and income tax matters relating to wealth succession planning and family business ownership.

Stefanie lives in Los Angeles, with her husband Marc and their new son Noah, whom she regards as her greatest achievement.

Guardianship, Wills and Trusts
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