Articles written by kenneth kirk
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 99
It ain't a Personal Flotation Device
When I was a kid, I lived for a while in a town near Brazil. Not the big country down in South America, but the small town of Brazil, Indiana. What was strange about the place was that they...
Nothing to lose but your estate plan
Today I want to talk about Marx. No, not the guy who wrote the Communist Manifesto. Not the comic with the big eyebrows either. Not even the ‘80’s rocker. I want to talk about a Marx you probably hav...
Honey, I think we need a prenup
If you ain’t no punk Holler “we want prenup! We want prenup!” It’s something that you need to have ‘Cause when she leave your *** She gonna leave with half. - Kanye West This month’s column is a...
Who's gonna drive you home?
Many of our Senior Voice readers will remember Ric Ocasek. He was the lead singer of a band called The Cars which had quite a few hits in the late 70s and early 80s. And if you were paying attention...
Putting into place the irrevocable
Lots of people get living trusts. For many folks, they’re a better way to avoid costs, disputes and delays when they shuffle off this mortal coil, as opposed to just having a will (or nothing at a...
Advance directive: Gotta do it, like it or not
I used to do a lot of litigation – trial lawyer work – and I still read the decisions the Alaska Supreme Court sends out each week. There was one this spring which had me shaking my head in ama...
Delayed certificates: Ask not for whom the bell tolls
A few months back, the State of Alaska got hacked pretty badly. Some evildoers broke into their system, and the State had to shut down all their systems for a while, and then bring them back up...
Oops, she did it again - Britney and conservatorship
I usually start thinking about my next column at least a month ahead of time. But then sometimes events derail my plans, and I have to write about something else. The 2018 earthquake, the recent...
Giving away the estate requires strategy, planning
One strategy you can use in estate planning is “lifetime gifts”. In other words, you sign things over to your heirs while you’re still alive, instead of making them wait until you’re gone. Due to...
What a mess Medicaid has become
In 33 years as a lawyer, I’ve had to deal with all kinds of government agencies. It comes with the territory. At various times I’ve wrestled with the IRS, child support enforcement, Social Sec...
Just what is an LLC and what does it do?
I’m an estate planning attorney, not a business attorney. Sure, some of my clients own businesses, but my focus is on how they transfer that business smoothly to their heirs on death, not about w...
'Do I really need a will?' Yes you do
Sometimes when you spend all day, every day dealing with the complications of a particular area of law, the simplest question can surprise you. People ask me, on a fairly regular basis, whether they...
When estate planning gets Fast and Furious
If you like movies with car chases, then you know who Paul Walker was. During the past 20 years, the Fast & Furious movies — I think there were nine in all — were your visual feast for car races, cha...
Death, taxes and stepping up to the plate
Deadlines are a funny thing. Two months ago, I needed to get my Senior Voice column in, shortly after the election. So on the morning after election day, I took a quick look at the results, and it app...
The power that springs into action
I try to avoid using Latin, since so few people understand it and I’m not in the business of confusing people. But as we lean toward the tape in this marathon run that 2020 has been, the words ...
The only constant is change – try to keep up
You have the advantage over me, Dear Reader. You know how the election turned out. Oh, I have a general idea. As I write this, it is November 4, the day after the election. At this point it looks...
Tackling the $15,000 tax question
The most stubborn myths usually start with a kernel of truth, which is then taken out of context. For instance, this is true: “You can give up to $15,000 away each year, tax-free”. But from that tru...
To have and to hold (together) is not so easy in Alaska
Al Martinez was a longtime syndicated newspaper columnist. Toward the end of his career, he said that of all the controversial subjects he had written about (including a lot of articles about...
Will the estate tax be an unwelcome 'comebacker'?
Baseball fans love to nickname things. A home run can be a simple “homer” but it can also be a “tater,” a “dinger,” a “jack” or “going yard”. In fact, there are dozens of nicknames for the b...
Putting away childish notions
You know how nice it is when you get a toy you have been wanting? If you don’t remember that far back, think about how a child’s eyes light up when it sees a toy under the Christmas tree. Or if you...
Estate planners and the consolation of philosophy
I can sum up the premise of today’s column in two words: philosophy matters. I’m not talking about Plato and Sartre and Descartes. I’m talking about the philosophy each of us brings to our work....
Advance Directives in the time of corona
Covid-19 is some scary stuff. It’s even more so if medical procedures make you nervous. By now we’ve all seen videos of people having long swabs stuck far up their noses, or a tube stuck down the...
Never let a crisis go to waste
This is the second time in less than two years I have written this column in the wake of a major traumatic event. A few days after the 2018 earthquake, I used that event to remind people that...
What does a Miller Trust actually do?
I’m keeping a list of the most frustrating myths I run into. First on the list, without a doubt, is the belief that a will avoids probate (it doesn’t). A close second is the myth that a Miller Tru...
The sharpest (estate planning) tool in the shed
IPop quiz: What is the most powerful estate planning tool? Most people are thinking: “That would be a will, right”? And indeed, the good old Last Will and Testament is important, but it has its lim...