estate planning

Check out our gallery to see how many of these 10 must-have documents are in your possession -- and which ones it's time for you to take action on.

Every adult needs a will: It may be depressing to contemplate, but die without one, and the state decides what happens to your property, and there's no guarantee the state's wishes and your own will coincide.

When most of us buy life insurance, we're thinking about one thing: Making sure our families are taken care of after we're gone. But in this season of giving, you might also want to think about setting up a policy to take care of your favorite charity.

There's something about life insurance that just freaks some people out -- we'd prefer not to consider our mortality. But September is life insurance awareness month, and lack of knowledge breeds fuzzy thinking. So we've sorted some facts from fictions and debunked an even dozen myths about life insurance.

Americans display a fairly significant disconnect between our ideals and our actions when it comes to preparing for our deaths: While 60% of us believe all adults should have estate plans, only 44% have one. But it's more than just fear of thinking about our mortality that's stalling many of us.

Shacking up isn't just for young folks anymore. Plenty of unmarried retirees are spending their golden years together. And while skipping the "I dos" can seem like the easier course, just living together can be complicated at this time of life. But we've got some tips to help you avoid the pitfalls.

America is DIY Nation, but in certain financial situations, a do-it-yourself strategy can make a bad situation much worse, because in investing and money matters, most of us don't know what we don't know. Here are eight times in your life when the high stakes demand that you call in the experts.

How much do you love your pet? What would happen to it should you die? More and more, people are solving that dilemma not by depending on the good will of a friend or a stipulation in a will. They are going with the gold standard to guarantee a good life for their pet if they should die first: the...

The KISS frontman may still want to rock all night and party every day. But lately he's been getting up relatively early, putting aside the makeup and fake blood and embracing financial responsibility -- pitching the financial advisory services from Cool Springs.

Neglecting estate planning is a grave error. If you don't plan your exit strategy before you die, it is likely that a lot more of your money and your property will go to Uncle Sam and the state tax man than your loved ones would have had to pay if you had been savvy about estate planning.