Denver Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog

Recently, media outlets published that Francis Bean Cobain – the 25-year-old daughter of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain – receives about $100,000 a month from a trust funded my her father’s publicity rights. Her father died without even a simple will. While intestacy laws dictated that his estate would pass to his surviving spouse and daughter, there were still ugly, public court battles.

As we frequently say, an estate plan could have avoided the lengthy litigation. In this post, we discuss how the information about trust payments became public. And we address why you need to consider that children might divorce as part of the estate planning process.

Marco D. Chayet, a founding partner of Chayet & Danzo LLC, and the Chair of NextFifty Initiative, was proud to participate in this week's announcement by Gov. John Hickenlooper and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne that Colorado has received a grant to fund a senior advisor on aging position in the governor's office.

"We know the road to address the changing age demographics in Colorado is largely shaped by policy," Mr. Chayet said at Tuesday's announcement. "The senior advisor on aging will help cut across the health care, housing, transportation and finance sectors and shape policy that will support the advancement and innovation of products and services for future generations."

In Colorado, conservatorship allows a conservator/fiduciary to handle the financial matters of an incapacitated person, the protected person.

A conservatorship and guardianship (related to living arrangements, daily needs and health care) are common for a minor child or an adult with developmental disabilities. Situations exist where a protected person may only be the subject or a conservatorship or vice versa.

Wrapping up someone’s affairs after he or she has died is a complicated responsibility that falls to the person who is appointed by the court to be personal representative of the estate. One of the main duties of the personal representative in most situations is to put out direct or published notices to the creditors of the deceased according to the specific procedures established by Colorado law. The notice tells creditors that they can file claims either with the personal representative or the appropriate state court by a particular deadline as required by law.   

Here at Chayet & Danzo, LLC, our attorneys have years of valuable experience handling claims against estates from both sides. We represent creditors in their attempts to collect debts owed to them by deceased individuals as well as personal representatives who must give proper notices, evaluate the validity of claims, decide whether to try to negotiate a settlement with a creditor or pay the debt as claimed, and determine if the estate does not have enough value to pay all valid claims, the proper order in which to honor them.