When most people talk about a will, they mean a Last Will & Testament. This includes lawyers as well as non-lawyer. It is common enough of a term that if you said simply, “I want to create a will,” most people will know what you mean.

There are a few types of wills. If you want to refer to these other types of wills, such as an ethical will or a living will, you would want to say the full name. Simply saying “will” can lead to confusion. If you go around saying last will and testament, you might ...

Understanding the differences in estate planning documents can help you to get organized which can, in turn, help you cover all of your bases. Your wishes are probably complicated. That’s ok. Most people have complicated wishes that tend to change overtime.

If your wishes are different from what someone would expect, then you might want to think about providing some type of explanation as to why you are making some of the decisions that you are making. No place is that more important that with a ...

The ethical will has a name that is misleading and can confuse people. An ethical will is in fact not a will at all. An ethical will is, rather, a personal statement that you make to loved ones that is passed to your loved ones after you have died.

An ethical will is not a legal document and therefore can take any format that you wish. It can be a video, a group of letters, or it can be more than one single thing. Generally, however, an ethical will is a letter.

You should create on ethical will p...

The law can be very complicated and at the top of that list, just behind property law (obviously!), is contracts law. For me, contracts was my favorite course in law school. Contracts is also the one class I went into thinking, I probably already know some of this information. Sometimes having an air of confidence can lead to bad endings, but not in the case of contracts law. My contracts course in law school also ended in the same sort of way, I felt I already knew most of it, but it’s the deta...

The concept of downloadable forms is not complicated. You get the basic gist of it. You buy a form online (we’ve got ‘em!), you download it, open it, and complete it. Sounds simple, right?

Absolutely, yes! You got it. (What? Were you expecting no? Come on, it’s not that complicated an idea and we don’t pretend to make it one.)

The functionality of a downloadable form is usually pretty simple and straightforward. How long you have access to a form you have purchased depends on the place you buy it ...

Contracts law 101 begins with offer, acceptance, and consideration. Most people have some level of understanding when it comes to the first two - offer and acceptance. Not only do most people have experiences with offer and acceptance, the language adds to the familiarity. Consideration, on the other hand, is as an unfamiliar word as it is a legal concept.

Consideration is often used with its Latin equivalent, “Quid Pro Quo” which translates as something for something. In contracts jargon that me...