Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (or Fifty Ways to Plan, Administer and Litigate Estates)
by Carol Warnick
As the old song by Paul Simon contemplates, there are fifty ways to leave your lover, and there are also fifty ways to plan, administer and litigate estates and trusts. I have recently become aware of various situations in which attorneys assume that because things are done a certain way in the state in which they practice, they are done the same way in other states.
I am licensed in three states, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and deal regularly with the significant differences between them. For example, Colorado tends to use “by representation” in dealing with passing assets down the generations, but Utah and Wyoming both use “per stirpes.” Read more