The Karp Law Firm held a Stacks and Snacks get-together on April 20 at our Palm Beach Gardens office. We invited our clients and other friends to socialize, enjoy fresh pastries and coffee, and drop off their unneeded documents for shredding on site. The turnout was great. On hand were Attorneys Joseph Karp, Jonathan Karp and Adele Harris; Legal Assistant Rosalinda Pecoraro; Legal Assistant Emily Bergel and her daughter, Bailey; Intake Coordinator Sandra Jantzen; and Marketing Director Deborah Karp. Thank you to everyone who did such a great job organizing the event! Thanks too to Paul of Tota ..read more

Having a Living Trust as the cornerstone of your estate plan can be advantageous, depending on your particular circumstances and estate planning goals. One notable advantage: A properly structured and funded Living Trust, unlike a Last Will & Testament, is a private document that avoids probate. Probate is the court-supervised process that can drain unnecessary fees from your estate and involve hassles and delays for your family after you pass on. So when we prepare a Living Trust for our clients, they sometimes find it curious when we advise them that they also need to have a Will!  ..read more

The Karp Law Firm attorneys helps clients seeking seeking long-term care Medicaid benefits for their loved one. In addition to being distraught about their loved one’s welfare, our clients also fear losing their economic security to nursing home costs. Unfortunately, that fear is realistic: With an annual cost of about $100,000 for a Florida long-term care facility, the average middle class family will find itself wiped out in no time. Under such unsettling circumstances and feeling desperate for economic help, some people may be tempted to be less than truthful when applying for Medicaid bene ..read more

Brian Wilson was the driving force behind the Beach Boys, the band that popularized surf music in the 1960s. The band created some of our most iconic pop songs: Little Surfer Girl, Surfin’ USA, California Girls, Good Vibrations, I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, and dozens more. The group had 37 songs reach the U.S. Top 40, the most of any American band. Now, at age 81, it appears Wilson is going to be the subject of a conservatorship (similar to a guardianship in Florida). The singer-songwriter has been diagnosed with dementia. He also has a history of substance abuse and has been struggling with ..read more

If you are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan and have ever sought pre-authorization for a recommended medical procedure, you know the pre-authorization process can be time-consuming and too often, unsuccessful. Designed to make sure medical procedures are truly necessary, pre-authorization delays and denials have drawn increased scrutiny in recent years from patients, physicians and lawmakers. Nine of ten doctors surveyed in a 2022 American Medical Association study report that patients had delayed care while waiting for authorization; one third reported that patients had become disabled ..read more

Every adult with people and assets to protect needs a plan to protect their loved ones in the event of incapacity or death. And what better example of a person with people to protect than the parent of a minor child? As a parent to one or more minor children, you no doubt have a busy life with plenty of issues to attend to besides estate planning. The prospect of your not being around to raise your child may seem remote. And thinking about your mortality may feel very uncomfortable. But what is even more uncomfortable is worrying about what would happen to your child if the worst came to pass ..read more

The Karp Law Firm handles Probate and Trust Administration, and our attorneys are often entrusted by clients to serve as their personal representatives and successor trustees.  Last year, three of our dear, longtime clients passed on. All were animal lovers and instructed us to use whatever tangible personal property they left behind to help animals, giving us the freedom to select the appropriate charity. Since all the clients were Palm Beach County residents, we researched charities in the local area. We opted to make a donation to Furry Friends, a 501c3 not-for-profit, no-kill rescue o ..read more

Every year, millions of dollars of life insurance proceeds go unclaimed because beneficiaries do not realize that a policy exists, or if they do, do not know how to find it. Lost policies are more common than you might think. Sometimes the beneficiary was never informed by the policyholder, or the beneficiary has just forgotten about it. Sometimes policy documents are lost or misplaced because of sloppy record-keeping, or because the policyholder failed to inform the insurer of a change of address, an especially common occurrence if the policy was paid in full. Whatever the reason, there is so ..read more

The April 15 income tax deadline approaches. If you are a Social Security recipient who has additional sources of income, you will pay federal income tax on a portion of your Social Security benefits. Of the 66 million Americans who collect benefits, about 40% have taxable benefits. Taxation of Social Security began in 1983. It has long been a thorn in the side of higher-earning beneficiaries, who consider it tantamount to double taxation. Now, relief may be on the way. A bill called the You  Earned It, You Keep It Act has been introduced in Congress. Before we talk about the changes that ..read more

Jay Leno, former host of The Tonight Show, has filed a petition for guardianship (called conservatorship in California) over his wife’s estate. Leno, 73 and his wife, Mavis, 77, met at the Comedy Club in the late 1970s. Atypically for Hollywood, the couple has been married for 43 years. They have no children. Mavis, a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, has been a longtime defender of women’s rights. Now, Mavis is suffering from dementia. According to the petition Leno filed in Los Angeles on January 26, she has problems with “memory, comprehension/processing, delusional ideation ..read more