Estate Planning

• American Bar Association (ABA) Estate Planning FAQs — An excellent overview of estate planning topics by the ABA.
• Findlaw Law Library Collection of Wills, Trusts, and Probate Law Articles — Collection of estate planning articles written for a professional audience.
• Estate Planning Links — Extensive set of estate planning links for consumers and professionals.
• U.S. Treasury/Internal Revenue Service — Tax forms and instructions, frequently asked questions, filing and other resources and information.
• U.S. Tax Code Online — Complete text of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, Title 26 of the U.S. Code, accessible in several searchable and linked formats.
• Social Security Online — The official site of the Social Security Administration.
• North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 36C: North Carolina Uniform Trust Code — The statutory law governing trusts in North Carolina. Searchable by keyword.
• North Carolina General Statutes —. The statutory law of North Carolina. Searchable by keyword.

Estate Planning for LGBT Couples

• Lambda Legal North Carolina Summary — Summary of NC law, including NC laws affecting LGBT domestic partners, from one of the most influential LGBT legal organizations.
• Estate Planning for LGBT Couples — Helpful article from AARP conveying estate planning recommendations for LGBT domestic partners of any age.
• Equality NC — Advocacy and political organization supporting equal rights and justice for LGBT citizens.

Advanced Directives

• ABA Consumer’s Toolkit for Health Care Advance Planning —. This link provides excellent information regarding how to plan for and get the most out of your health care advance directive documents.

Advance Planning

• The Conversation Project — Excellent materials for taking charge of how to communicate your end-of-life wishes to your loved ones.
• Prepare for Your Care — Self-help website designed to help people and their loved ones prepare for medical decision-making by guiding the user through five easily understandable steps of preparation for decision-making with the help of multiple video aids. The result is a printable action plan.
• Five Wishes — A clear, popular, user-friendly self-help guide, published by Aging With Dignity, for developing a plan for informing your doctors and loved ones of your health care and end-of-life wishes in advance of need. You may use the output to help inform your lawyer, loved ones, and medical team so that they will be prepared to act correctly on your behalf when you are not able to make medical decisions for yourself.

Serving as a Health Care Proxy

• Making Decisions for Someone Else: A How-To Guide — Published by the ABA Commission on Law and Aging, this guide assists anyone serving in the role of health care decision maker for someone else.
• End-of-Life Care — Acclaimed books Hard Choices for Loving People, which discusses end-of-life decision making, and Light in the Shadows, which discusses living with a life-threatening illness, from ordained health care chaplain and author Hank Dunn. These books are very reasonably priced.

Advance Directive Registries

• Personal Smartphone Registry —. My Health Care Wishes is a smartphone app that enables individuals and their family members to store their own and each other’s health care advance directives and key health contacts and related information on their Apple or Android smartphones, and to send documents instantly and directly to health care providers by email or Bluetooth. A lite version of the app is free; the full or pro version is $3.99.
• Cloud Registries — The trusted, non-profit Medic Alert Foundation offers cloud advance directive storage and access to first responders and medical personnel in emergencies.

Revocable Living Trusts

• “6 surprising facts about a living revocable trust”–Interesting facts about revocable living trusts. — Suze Orman on Revocable Living Trusts.
• What Property to Put in a Revocable Living Trust — Handy overview of the types of property that can be placed into a Revocable Living Trust.
• 10 Things That You Should Know About Living Trusts. — AARP article about living trusts.

Probate

• What Are Non Probate Assets? — The classifications of property described in the article normally avoid probate court.
• How Much Does Probate Cost? — A general overview of probate costs.

Probate in North Carolina

• An Overview of the North Carolina Probate Process — Learn about how probate works in NC.
• NC Estate Procedures for Executors and Administrators — A detailed discussion of the NC probate process by the NC Administrative Office of the Courts.
• NC Probate Court and Fees Costs — Official NC Probate Fees Chart.