This firm also publishes content at the lawyer directory and rating site Avvo.com. Most recently, we posted a 16-step guide to petitioning for year's support in Georgia.

Year's support is the right of every surviving spouse or minor child of a deceased to inherit certain property from the estate, regardless of what is stated in the will. Attorneys have also used year's support as a strategic  way of legally avoiding certain debts of the estate, ensuring a maximum tax break on certain real property of the estate, and quickly administering some intestate estates without the need for a full court-supervised administration and all of the complicated steps that can involve. 

Tanner Pittman, LLC regularly advises clients and assists with petitions for year's support, year's support litigation, and other probate and estate matters. 

Trust and estate law contains a fiction known as the "fertile octogenarian," the application of which is limited to jurisprudence surrounding the obscure Rule Against Perpetuities and has had its greatest impact on modern life in the context of law school exams.

We live, however, in exciting times full of legal innovation and can now announce the possibility of an actual fertile nonagenarian in the person of famous-for-being-famous Zsa Zsa Gabor. Gabor's husband, Prince Frederic, is apparently arranging for the birth of her second child, to be had (via a surrogate mother) at age 94. Trial and Heirs has more. (Hat-tip to the Minnesota Estate Planning Blog for clueing us in.)

I intend on using this example on the next retiree client who challenges the provision in my will that states it is made "in contemplation of possible future birth or adoption." (A thoroughly wise clause to include but one that tends to trouble clients older than normal reproductive age).

Tanner Pittman, LLC is an estate planning and probate law firm that is familiar with the proper application of the Rule Against Perpetuities. Feel free to contact us today about your own estate issues.

Clients making last wills and other estate arrangements know that they are creating very meaningful documents for their families. Oftentimes, wills are accompanied with family "love letters" expressing in plain terms the clients' thoughts that occasion their own deaths.

One client in particular did some research before drafting his own will and discovered that common practice in the last century was to begin a will with a Christian prologue rather than the modern, dry "this is my will, revoking all other wills before it, period." I'll publish his preferred language below.

My question for the client (or attorney) reader is: would you like to be approached by your lawyer about inclusion of a religious or Christian prologue to your will, or would that sound to your ears like your lawyer were proselytizing? How best would the question be asked?

The comment field is open. Thank you for your responses.

In the name of God, Amen. I, John Q. Testator, of the town of Anytown, Some County, Georgia, being weak in body, but of perfect mind and memory, thanks be to God, calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing that it is appointed for all mankind once to die, do make and ordain this my Last Will and Testament. That is to say, principally and first of all, trusting in Jesus Christ for my eternal salvation, I give my soul to God who gave it to me, and my body I commend to the earth to be buried in a decent Christian burial at the discretion of my Executor, nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mighty hand of God. And as touching such worldly state wherewith it has pleased God to bless me in this life, I give, demise, and dispose of in the following manner and form.