A DNR is a do-not-resuscitate instruction, the formal name of which in Arizona law is a prehospital medical care directive.  Read all about it in my March, 2018, Estate Planning Law Report, posted in the publications section at deconcinimcdonald.com.  
If you decide you should have one, I can help.

I have talked to several people recently with questions about whether or not a particular writing (document) qualifies as a will.  The questions usually come up, unfortunately, in this context: my family member died, this is the what they wrote down about what happens to their property, is it enforceable?
I’ll have new report on this subject soon, since it comes up frequently.  In the meantime, you can read what I wrote about it in 2016, in my newsletter archive.

When I last wrote about it nearly a year and a half ago, 19 states, including Arizona, had enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA for you acronym mavens).  I pointed out at the time that California had not adopted the RUFADAA, and that unless California adopts the RUFADAA or something like it, its adoption in other states may not do much good.  That’s because California is where many of the companies holding your digital assets (e.g. Google and Facebook) are located.
Another whole aspect of handling digital assets involves platforms like Github, that are designed for individuals and companies to develop and store code.  Those are digital assets that have real value.  
As of this writing, 37 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands have adopted the RUFADAA, but California still hasn’t adopted it.  Perhaps California has similar legislation, but if not, I don’t know how Google and Facebook, not to mention Github, are going to react to fiduciaries’ attempts to retrieve digital assets in their control.
The fact that the RUFADAA has been adopted in Arizona but not in California is another reason to use (Arizona based) GoDaddy for email, domain registration, and web hosting.  

My January newsletter, Estate Planning Law Report, has been posted for your edification.  It’s about the always-timely topic of organ and tissue donations, and how to incorporate such a donation (the legal term is “anatomical gift”) into your estate plan.  
The newsletter is posted in the publications section of my firm’s web site.  If you would like to receive my newsletter (with useful information on estate planning, tax, and real estate questions) via snail mail each and every month, please send me an email, using the email on my main page. 

A post on a blog that I do not frequent, but that I look at occasionally because other blogs I do frequent link to it from time to time, got me thinking about what’s often the trickiest question for families doing estate planning: who would be responsible for your children if you aren’t around?
The post that got me thinking about that question was one about some survey suggesting that grandparents aren’t up on all the latest parenting tips.  My reaction is, why would they be, and so what?  Does that make grandparents any less important?
That made me think about the estate planning question because in the wills I draft for parents of minor children, grandparents are probably nominated as guardians more often than anyone else.  I doubt that the parents who have made those nominations gave too much thought to whether or not their parents are up on all the latest parenting tips.

You didn’t include the birthday check from your grandmother on your income tax return, so why would you have to include the money you receive from her estate?  That question and a few others are answered in my latest Estate Planning Law Report.  You’ll find it in the same place where it’s posted every month: in the publications section at deconcinimcdonald.com.
Your comments are welcome, as always.  

End of life care is a subject I have addressed before, most recently in my June, 2017, Estate Planning Law Report.  Charlie Gard was an infant born in England who died recently after living for only a few months.  The case attracted international attention when a court in the United Kingdom denied the child’s parents the opportunity to seek experimental treatment for Charlie in the United States.  It’s a difficult situation with no easy answers, and I know this is controversial, but I found it pretty appalling that a court would deny the child’s parents the opportunity to seek experimental treatment for him at their own expense.  There’s a brief commentary at The American Interest that sums it up pretty well.
If you are concerned about who will have the ability to make decisions for you, consider a health care power of attorney.
Via Instapundit.

You can read my Estate Planning Law Report here.  It’s about new law on end of life care.  I also wrote a short item about the origins of inheritance law.
If you want to be on my mailing list (yes I still send my newsletter out via snail mail) send me an email or call me.  My contact information is here.

This is the first sentence of the abstract for a paper by some guy at Harvard: “Historically, it is safe to say that very few laws did as much to stoke inequality as laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions.”
What exactly does he mean when he refers to “laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions?”  Well, he gives us a hint in the last sentence of the abstract: “Hence, inheritance taxation is most likely necessary from a classical liberal point of view as an instrument of social mobility to counter notable problems of social immobility, say hereditary vocational stratification, which a system of private property rights creates.”
This is what I think he means: modern law allows you to leave your lifetime accumulation of assets to your children, as opposed to when no one but the King could own anything, so commoners couldn’t leave anything to their children (i.e. before the system of private property rights was created).  Therefore, it is necessary for the government to take (at least some of) the assets you would otherwise leave to your children, to prevent your children from having an economic advantage over others whose parents didn’t leave them anything.  
Get it?
Via Taxprof Blog.  

I found this article in the Arizona Republic interesting.  It’s about new assisted living facilities in the Phoenix area that offer reduced rents for people with modest incomes.  That could really fill a need, since there are many people who need some assistance but don’t meet the medical criteria for assistance from the Arizona Long Term Care System (ALTCS).  
What the article doesn’t say, however, is whether there is an asset test in addition to an income test to qualify for the reduced rent.  Many people that I talk to would qualify for benefits from ALTCS based on their income, but have too much in assets to qualify, with the result that they have to use their assets to pay for their care until the assets are all expended, then qualify for benefits because they don’t have enough income to pay for their care.  
This kind of planning is often necessary, but is not widely understood.  I have been doing it for a long time.  The need for it has definitely not decreased.