But one area many parents delay is estate planning.

The truth is that every parent with young children should have a basic estate plan in place, even if they are early in their careers or still building their savings. Estate planning is not just about money—it’s about making sure your children are cared for by the people you trust and that their financial future is protected.

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Planning So Care Comes Naturally

When families call us after a medical emergency or unexpected loss, they’re often in panic mode — trying to manage care, finances, and court procedures all at once. Estate planning is the opposite of that chaos. It’s calm, thoughtful, and proactive.

The post The Quiet Side of Estate Planning: Protecting Families Before There’s a Crisis appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

 Option 1: One Spouse Buys Out the Other

A common solution is for one spouse to keep the home by “buying out” the other spouse’s equity. This requires:

The post Divorce and the Family Home: Buyouts, Sales, and Other Options appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

Equal Division Presumption

Indiana law starts with a presumption that dividing marital property equally (50/50) is just and reasonable. This is a baseline, not a rigid rule.  A presumption just means that is what the court will assume until the court is provided evidence that there is more-fair split.

The post Fair vs. Equal: Understanding Equitable Distribution in Indiana appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

 What is the Marital Estate?

In Indiana, the marital estate includes all property owned by either spouse at the time a divorce is filed. This is known as the “one-pot” theory, meaning (almost) everything goes into a single pool regardless of when or how it was acquired.

The post How Does Indiana Define the Marital Estate in Divorce? appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

Assets and Debts:

The passing of one of the parties during divorce can significantly impact the division of assets and debts. Typically, divorce proceedings aim to distribute marital property equitably between the spouses. However, if one spouse passes away before the divorce is finalized, their assets may be subject to different rules depending on the jurisdiction.

The post Navigating Divorce and Unexpected Loss: A Guide to Addressing Legal Matters appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

What happens to the kids if, God forbid, something were to happen to you and Mr. Right on your trip? Come to think of it, have you been planning to put a will together for the kids for the past, um, well, since they were born?

Married parents of minor children share joint custody by operation of law. If one parent dies, the other parent becomes the child’s sole legal guardian. Generally, the mother has sole physical and legal custody of minor child born to unmarried parents. A father must establish paternity to have exercise legal rights with respect to that child. Following divorce, custody of minor children is specified by the Divorce Decree and Settlement Agreement signed by a Judge. If the custodial parent dies, the noncustodial parent becomes the minor child’s legal guardian under Indiana law, in most circumstances.

The post #1 Best Plan to Take Care of Children if Parents Die Simultaneously appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

One of the central concepts of Saving the Family Cottage is to avoid problems of real property owned jointly by several individuals — a situation that, of course, can arise when property is passed from one generation to the next. When property has multiple owners, disagreements between them can result in the property being partitioned. For some types of property, such as undeveloped land, the partitioning may mean that the property is divided into multiple parcels, like cutting a pie into pieces, with each owner receiving a piece of the whole. In other cases, such as a vacation cottage, a dispute may result in the property being sold and the proceeds divided among the owners.

The authors’ primary solution to that problem — one that we and many estate planning attorneys heartily endorse — is to create a limited liability company to be owned by the family members and to transfer ownership of the property to the LLC. One reason is that transferring ownership of LLC interest from one person to another, unlike transferring ownership of real property, is generally not a matter of public record. A more compelling reason is that the law provides very few rules to govern the relationship between multiple owners of real property (or most personal property, for that matter) and very few mechanisms for resolving disputes that do not result in the termination of the joint ownership. In contrast, the flexibility of LLCs (which we have touted in this blog multiple times) permits the owners to decide in advance who will make decisions concerning the property and how they will be made and how disputes among heirs will be resolved while keeping the property in the family.

The post LLCs for Estate Planning and Keeping the Family Cabin in the Family appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

The Whitfield Case

L.B. Whitfield, III owned half of the voting stock in a business that had been in his family for generations. The other half had belonged to L.B.’s brother, who died and left the stock to a trust for the benefit of his son.

The post Family Businesses: Succession Planning for LLCs appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.

Permissible Purposes for LLCs

With the new amendments, Section 6 of the Indiana Business Flexibility Act now explicitly states that LLCs may be used not only for business purposes but also for personal and nonprofit purposes. For an example of a personal purpose, a married couple who own a vacation cabin and want it to remain in the family after they are gone might place the cabin in a limited liability company and then, by gift, by will, or by other means, transfer the ownership of the LLC to their children or grandchildren. Because the cabin is not used to generate income, the purpose of the LLC is personal, not business.

The post Positive Changes to Indiana LLC Laws – Estate Planning appeared first on Indiana Law Blog.