Author: Scott A. Makuakane, Counselor at Law, Est8Planning Counsel LLLC

  • Vacation With Your Important Papers

    Vacation With Your Important Papers by Scott A. Makuakane, Counselor at Law, Est8Planning Counsel LLLC from the August-September 2016 issue of Generations Magazine, Hawai‘i’s Resource for Life

  • Endowment Gift Keeps on Giving

    Endowment Gift Keeps on Giving by Scott A. Makuakane, Counselor at Law, Est8Planning Counsel LLLC from the June-May 2016 issue of Generations Magazine, Hawai‘i’s Resource for Life

  • Who Should Think About Medicaid?

    An unpleasant fact of life is the prospect of needing long-term care someday. Statistics tell us that 70 percent of Americans will need long-term care for some period of time before death. So it is not just possible, but very likely that you or someone close to you will need long-term care. In Hawai‘i, the…

  • What is a POLST And Do I Need One?

    If you were to collapse unexpectedly, how aggressively would you want emergency medical personnel to act in trying to keep you alive? If you were a typical, healthy, individual, you would probably say, “do whatever it takes to keep me going, even if you have break a few ribs to do it!” (This can happen…

  • First Things First

    You may have heard the old joke, “where there’s a will… I want to be in it.” That may be true, but effective estate planning covers much more than just “who gets my stuff.” When you sift through your own reasons for doing estate planning, you may find that naming who gets your stuff takes…

  • The Most Important Document

    The one estate planning document that everyone 18 and older should have is an Advance Health-Care Directive. It is not the sexiest tool in the estate planning toolbox, but it can head off family strife, heartache, and needless attorney’s fees as no other document can. Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terri Schiavo. Sound familiar?…

  • Keeping Peace in the Family

    On May 27, 2015, Reuters reported that a Georgia judge had appointed a mediator to help the family of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. decide whether to sell Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize and his personal Bible. Dr. King carried this Bible during the historic marches and rallies of the ’60’s, and President…

  • Paying for Long-Term Care

    According to an article published in the Wall Street Journal on May 14, 2012, if you are married and you and your spouse both reach the age of 65, there is a 70 percent probability that one of you is going to need long-term care. As if that is not troubling enough, a great many…

  • Be Giving While You’re Living

    Kingdom Advisors founder Ron Blue takes an interesting approach to estate planning. He advocates lifetime giving as a way to assure that the objects of your bounty are worthy recipients of your wealth. This could play out a couple of different ways. As Blue points out, there are three places your “stuff” can go after…

  • Easy Come … Easy Go

    Receiving an inheritance can certainly be like winning the lottery. What could be wrong with that? Callie Rogers, age 16, won $3.1 million in a British lottery. By the age of 22, the unwed mother of two had attempted suicide twice, and spent over $400,000 on cocaine alone (in addition to more conventional luxuries). She…