September 2026

Handling inherited IRAs under the new tax laws in Massachusetts comes down to one change: if you inherited an IRA from someone other than your spouse who died in 2020 or later, you generally must empty the account within 10 years, and under IRS final regulations now in force, you may also owe a required

Yes. If you have a revocable living trust in Massachusetts, you should also have a pour-over will, and nearly every well-drafted trust-based plan includes one. A pour-over will directs any asset you failed to retitle into your trust at your death, names your personal representative, and nominates guardians for minor children. It is the safety

Yes, in most cases your trust should hold your cryptocurrency in Massachusetts, and the reason is more practical than legal. Crypto has no beneficiary designation, no customer service line that will help your family, and no recovery process if the keys are lost. A trust gives your successor trustee immediate authority to act, keeps the

To avoid conflict between your second spouse and your children in Massachusetts, you have to give each side certainty rather than leaving them to negotiate after you die. The tools that work are a QTIP or marital trust that supports your spouse for life and then passes to your children, a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement

If you want to leave a rental property to your kids and keep the peace, the best answer is usually neither. Leaving it to them jointly gives any one child the right to force a sale of the whole property, and leaving it to one child individually creates an inequity you have to offset somewhere

To leave money to minor children in Massachusetts, you generally need a trust. Minors cannot legally own or manage significant property, so if you name a child directly as a beneficiary, the money ends up under court-supervised conservatorship until they turn 18, or in a custodial account they control outright at 21. A trust lets

Neither document exists under Massachusetts law by those names. A “medical power of attorney” and a “directive to physicians” are terms used in other states, most often Texas. In Massachusetts, the document that gives someone legal authority over your medical care is a health care proxy, created under General Laws Chapter 201D. Massachusetts does not

To handle digital assets in your estate plan in Massachusetts, you need to do three things: use each provider’s own built-in legacy tool, grant your fiduciaries explicit written authority over digital assets in your will, trust, and power of attorney, and keep a secure inventory of accounts separate from those documents. Massachusetts is one of