Cumberland Legacy Law* provides the highest quality Estate Planning for clients in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Tennessee. Whether you need a sophisticated strategy for minimizing or avoiding estate taxes and providing maximum possible asset protection, or just a simple will or trust to ensure your assets are distributed in accordance with your wishes, or anything in between, we are here to help you and your loved ones.
We present seminars on a variety of Estate Planning and Elder Law topics; call us if you want to be on our seminar mailing list, or subscribe to our newsletter by jotting a quick note to us.
Nina Whitehurst, the owner of Cumberland Legacy Law, is a member of Wealth Counsel, Elder Counsel and the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys, all national estate planning attorney organizations. She is continually upgrading and updating her knowledge of estate planning law through seminars and being an active member of several estate planning attorney email list serves. Her husband, Brian Whitehurst, is the firm's marketing coordinator. Nina Lamothe is the firm's documentation paralegal.
*Cumberland Legacy Law is not a public legal aid society.
- Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
- J.D. (1986) | Law
- Honors: summa cum laude
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- Arizona State University
- B.S. (1983) | Accounting
- Honors: summa cum laude
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Rates, Retainers and Additional Information
No legal advice is provided prior to engagement. You will know when you have engaged an attorney because you will have signed a fee agreement and will have provided a deposit for legal fees.
- Estate Planning
- Guardianship & Conservatorship Estate Administration, Health Care Directives, Trusts, Wills
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- English: Spoken, Written
- Q. What are the Tennessee inheritance laws for land without a will?
- A: When a Tennessee resident passes away survived by living descendants and no surviving spouse, then the legal heirs are the then living children plus the descendants of any predeceased children. If you and your sister are the only children, living or deceased, then you are now 50/50 owners of the property. This is automatic by operation of law in Tennessee. But even though it is "automatic" by law, it really isn't automatic in practice. Something needs to happen in order to update the land records. A probate attorney can help you with either opening a probate or filing an affidavit of heirship. The choice depends on a host of other facts and circumstances.
- Q. Should I put IRA into revocable trust to prevent child's father from controlling assets?
- A: You absolutely do not want to re-title your IRA to your revocable trust because that would be a taxable event and also would stop all tax-free growth in the account. What some people do is name their trust as the beneficiary of the IRA. That is something that you might consider with the advice of your estate planning attorney.
- Q. Is my Freewill.com will valid in Pennsylvania?
- A: I would caution you against using Freewill.com to create your will anywhere. I was just hired by a person whose parent passed with a will generated by Freewill.com. It has many flaws. I cannot tell whether they are flaws in the software or flaws in user input, but either way I am a little worried that I might not be able to convince a court to accept this will to probate.
An experienced estate planning attorney can help you create a will that complies with applicable law and is designed to achieve your estate planning goals.
Also, although I am not licensed in Pennsylvania, I can tell you that a will that is merely notarized and not witnessed will not pass muster in most states.
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