Let’s Talk About Estate Planning by Virginia McArthur (Ethiopia)

Let’s Talk About Estate Planning
by Virginia McArthur, Esq. (Ethiopia 1964-66)
Cambridge Studio Publisher
280 pages
September 2020
$8/99 (Kindle); $13.25 (Paperback)

Will your estate plan fail? If you don’t understand how it works, you could dismantle it yourself! Are you tempted to take free advice about planning? Do you avoid reading the fine print? Will joint ownership simplify or complicate your plan? What happens to assets left directly to a minor?

Know it or blow it.

Let’s Talk About Estate Planning defogs estate planning through invented, but true to life, conversations between friends, or between clients and fictional lawyer Rebecca Dalton. Some of these exchanges expose major errors, not all of them fixable. This entertaining and informative treatment of estate planning, wills, trusts, probate, beneficiary designations, titling of assets, powers of attorney, and gifts illustrates how these pieces fit together.

Read it, and you will say “NOW I understand my estate plan!”

Let’s Talk About Estate Planning also discusses managing your lawyer, the usefulness of tabular and pictorial representations of your estate plan, and how to ease estate administration for your heirs and beneficiaries when you are gone. A glossary and some handy websites are included.

Ginny settled in Washington, D.C, after serving as a PCV Volunteer in Ethiopia (1964-66). After working in the field of corrections research, she earned her law degree at Georgetown University Law Center. Her first legal work pertained to the Employee Retirement Income Act of 1974 (ERISA). Over time, Ginny’s work came to focus on trusts and estates, subjects in which she taught and wrote for lawyers. In 1992 Ginny opened a boutique T&E law office licensed to practice in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.  She retired in 2015.  The firm continues to this day under a new name. 

Ginny is a (retired) Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and past President of the Washington, D.C. Estate Planning Council. She has held leadership positions in ACTEC and in the D.C. Bar.

The book, Let’s Talk About Estate Planning, endeavors to answer questions that many of Ginny’s clients asked during meetings, and some they should have asked before they took steps that would undermine their estate plans.