New, Interesting or Useful Links
These sites are selected and rated by Glenn M. Karisch of Austin, Texas. The ratings and comments are subjective. |
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Has something to offer |
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A useful site, with some limitations |
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A good site, worth looking at |
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Definitely worth linking to |
| Email Mailing Lists for Estate Planners National Legal Sites of Interest to Estate Planners Texas Legal Sites of Interest to Estate Planners Other National Sites of Interest Other Texas Sites of Interest Search Engines Links, Links and More Links |
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| Email Mailing Lists for Estate Planners | ||
| Link | Description | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| The Texas Probate Mailing List (Subscription Information) | This web page gives subscription information for Glenn Karisch's Texas Probate email mailing list (probate@io.com), a list for Texas estate planning, probate and trust lawyers. The list is particularly useful (and active) during legislative sessions, since Glenn posts frequent updates on probate legislation. | Not rated since the list is maintained by the author. |
| The ABA-PTL List Archives | The ABA-PTL list is the best single resource on estate planning and probate law on the Internet. This link is to the list's searchable archives, and the archive page also contains information about subscribing to the list. |
The best, most current information available on estate tax issues and other national estate planning issues. |
| The GIFT-PL List Archives Address: http://www.listserv.iupui.edu/archives/gift-pl.html |
The GIFT-PL is a mailing list about charitable giving techniques. This link is to the list's searchable archives, and the archive page also contains information about subscribing to the list. |
A good source of information about CRUTS, etc., but there are a lot of nonlawyers on the list. |
| National Legal Sites of Interest to Estate Planners | ||
| Link Name | Description | Rating |
| Thomas -- U. S. Congress on the Internet Address: http://thomas.loc.gov/ |
This is a great source for legislative information on federal legislation, including full-text versions of pending bills. It sometimes takes several days for bills marked up in committee to show up here, however. |
The best primary source for information on pending federal legislation. |
| Cornell Law School 's Legal Information Institute Address: http://www.law.cornell.edu/ |
This site is an incredible resource, providing up-to-the-minute Supreme Court opinions, state law resources, and more. |
The best source for Supreme Court decisions and legal resources in other states. |
| BenefitsLink | This site may have more information than Noel Ice's paper on distributions from qualified plans. |
Great ERISA information. |
| Noel Ice's Web Site Address: http://www.trustsandestates.net/ |
Noel Ice of Fort Worth, one of the leading qualified plan distribution lawyers in the country, hosts this site, which includes an on-line version of Noel's treatise qualified plan distribuions. |
Great ERISA information. |
| IRS Written
Determinations Address: http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/news/efoia/determine.html |
PLRs, TAMs, and other IRS rulings on line, for free. The IRS started this service in 1999, so there are no pre-1999 rulings |
It's about time. They'd get four peppers if they'd have pre-1999 rulings. |
| LawGuru.com's Internet Law Library | The U. S. House used to host this resource of federal information, but they dropped it in 1999. Lawguru.com picked up the service then. It has lots of links to federal materials (the U. S. Code, etc.) |
Very useful. |
| Mark Welch's California Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law Site Address: http://www.ca-probate.com/ |
One of the best attorney-sponsored site on the Web for estate and probate information. Most of the information is geared to California, but the links are great. There's a comprehensive list of probate lawyers with web sites nationwide as well. |
An excellent all around site. |
| Legal Research for Estate Planners | Jason Havens has developed this site, which is geared to estate planning attorneys. |
Very comprehensive. |
| The Roth IRA Site Address: http://www.rothira.com/ |
More than you would ever want to know about Roth IRAs. |
If you are into this sort of thing. |
| Trusts & Estates Address: http://www.trustsandestates.com/ |
The magazine's web site has much useful information. |
Good, reliable information. |
| The National Archive's Code of Federal Regulations Site Address: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-search.html |
This site is a good free source of tax regulations, since it can be searched by Title. Thus, searching Title 26 yields most tax regulations estate planners are interested in. |
A good, searchable free source for tax regulations. |
| The National Tax Service's IRS Bulletins Site | This site has many revenue rulings, revenue procedures, etc. It doesn't have the latest information, but it's free. |
Free source for many Rev. Rul. and Rev. Procs. |
| American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) Site Address: http://www.actec.org/ |
This site is maintained by ACTEC, a national association of estate and trust lawyers. It is divided into a public side (for everyone) and a private side (for ACTEC fellows only). The public side contains a number of articles, tax rulings, etc., of interest to estate planning lawyers. One publicly available page lists ACTEC's web sites of the week, which is an excellent source of new and interesting sites. |
The substantive information on this site is first-rate, but it does not attempt to cover a broad range of issues. This is an excellent secondary source and the links are good. |
| National Committee on Planned Giving Address: http://www.ncpg.org/ |
The NCPG site is the best starting place for information on charitable remainder trusts and other charitable giving techniques, including links to other related sites. |
Good starting point for charitable information. |
| Wills on the Web Address: http://www.ca-probate.com/wills.htm |
Mark Welch's collection of the wills of famous people. |
Interesting reading, if you are into that sort of thing. |
| The Internal Revenue Service Site Address: http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/ |
This is the main IRS site. It is a good source for downloadable forms. |
Useful source of tax forms. |
| Cornell Law School's U. S. Code-Index to Title 26 | This site has the entire U. S. Code (although it is not always 100% current). This link is to the index to Title 26 -- Chapters 11 - 14 related to estate, gift, and generation-skipping tax. |
A good way to review the code, but it is not 100% current. |
| The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Site Address: http://www.naela.com/ |
The NAELA site has information about the organization, and the members area may have useful substantive information, but the public side has little substantive legal information. |
Good resource for information on NAELA, short on substantive law. |
| Law Journal Extra's Wills and Trusts Site | Law Journal Extra offers free substantive articles on estate planning and trust topics. |
Articles are well-written and timely. |
| The ABA's Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section's Home
Page Address: http://www.abanet.org/rppt/home.html |
This site has links to section-sponsored listservs, including ABA-PTL. It also has a number of real estate and probate related links. |
The links are good. |
| Texas Legal Sites of Interest to Estate Planners | ||
| Link Name | Description | Rating |
| The Texas Probate Web Site Address: http://www.texasprobate.net/ |
This site, maintained by Glenn M. Karisch, has excellent information on Texas probate legislation and spotty coverage of other Texas issues, including some forms | Not rated, since the author maintains the site |
| The Real Estate, Probate and Trust Law Section's Web Site Address: http://www.reptl.org/ |
The Section's web site has the materials from the Advanced Estate Planning and Probate Course and the Advanced Drafting Course since 1993 online in a searchable format. This part of the site is available only to section members on a password basis. The site also has information on section committees. |
The section's redesigned site has many more CLE articles and a much better search engine. The password system is improved, too. |
| Texas Legislature Online Address: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/ |
This free site contains virtually all of the information that the Texas Legislative Service, a fee-based service, has. It also has the Texas statutes online. The entire Probate Code may be downloaded in ASCII format. |
A great resource, especially during legislative sessions. |
| Larry Anderson's Legal Directory | Larry Anderson is a Crosby, Texas, lawyer who has placed a lot of interesting and useful wills and probate information, including some forms; Larry has an excellent links page. |
The information is first-rate. |
| The Denton County Internet Site Address: http://www.co.denton.tx.us/ |
This site is an example of what a county can now do to make its official information available to the public. In addition to useful information about the courts and court personnel, this site permits searches of judicial records, including docket sheets, by party name or cause number. |
The best local government site in Texas (at least to the author's knowledge). |
| The Harris County Probate Courts Site Address: http://www.co.harris.tx.us/probate/ |
Harris County's probate court site has information about each court, including court staffers and docket information.. |
A good local judicial site. |
| The Dallas County Probate Courts Site | This site has information on the statutory probate courts -- and judges -- in Dallas County, including the judge's responses to useful questions, such as pet peeves, dress and decorum requirements, etc. |
A good local judicial site. |
| Paul Premack's Texas Elder Law Pages Address: http://www.premack.com/ |
Paul Premack writes a weekly elder law column for the San Antonio Express-News. Those articles and other consumer-oriented elder law materials are located on this site. |
The site is geared to consumers, but the articles are well-written and may be of use to practitioners as well -- especially for getting general information on tricky Medicaid issues. |
| Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism Address: http://www.txethics.org |
This page contains information on the ethics rules affecting Texas lawyers. |
Useful information on ethical considerations. |
| The Computer and Technology Section of the State Bar of
Texas Address: http://www.cs.sbot.org/ |
A good source of information. The links page (called "Pipeline") is good. |
Good information on office technology. |
| State Bar of Texas Professional Development Program Site Address: http://www.texasbarcle.com/ |
This site has information on bar-sponsored CLE, including CLE opportunities over the Internet. It also has links to many useful sites. |
The online CLE may come in handy. |
| Sterling Minor's Memo for Newly Appointed
Texas Executors or Administrators Address: http://www.minordavis.com/exeins.htm |
This memo may be useful as an example of one attorney's instructions to newly appointed executors. |
A good resource on the limited question of instructing new executors. |
| The Texas Judicial Server Address: http://www.courts.state.tx.us/ |
This site has useful information about state courts, including the name and telephone numbers of each statutory probate judge. |
This site would be great if it included access to the reported cases (or slip opinions) of each court. |
| Secretary of State of Texas Site Address: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/ |
This site has information on fee-based electronic access to corporate information and some other useful information, but it should offer free access to corporate information. |
Little useful information for now. |
| Texas Supreme Court Opinions and Orders | This site has pkzip and WordPerfect 5.1 versions of opinions and orders issued by the Texas Supreme Court, organized by date of issuance. |
This site is good if you are looking for a recent opinion, but it is not easily searched. |
| Law.com Texas Address: http://www5.law.com/tx/ |
This site has general information about the legal profession in Texas. |
Not much specifically about probate. |
| Other National Sites of Interest | ||
| The Virtual
Chase Address: http://www.virtualchase.com/ |
A law firm maintains this site, which is dedicated to offering assistance in legal research. |
Useful information. |
| Megalaw.com Address: http://www.megalaw.com/ |
Good general site for lawyers, with a legal search engine and lots of informative stuff. |
Check out the lawyer joke archive. |
| LawGuru.com Address: http://www.lawguru.com/ |
Another good national legal site. |
Good info. |
| Law and Politics: Internet Guide | This site has a number of useful links, including articles on how to perform various research tasks on the Internet (see the "Legal Research" page). |
A thorough collection of national legal information. |
| Courts.net Address: http://www.courts.net/ |
Information on virtually every court in the country (including Texas, of course), including links to online opinions. |
An extremely useful site. |
| Kelly Blue Book Address: http://www.kbb.com/ |
Get a blue book value for that used car, online, for free |
This is way cool. |
| Edmunds Car Info Address: http://www.edmunds.com/ |
Similar to Kelly Blue Book, with lots of information about new and used cars. |
Not quite as easy to get a usable (for 706 purposes) quote as Kelly |
| Encyclopędia
Britannica Address: http://britannica.com/ |
The encyclopedia is online, together with a dictionary and other research tools. |
A good one to bookmark. |
| Versus Law Address: http://www.versuslaw.com/ |
A fee-based legal research tool on the web. |
I've never used it, but I hear it's a good alternative to Westlaw and Lexis. |
| Ancestry.com Address: http://www.ancestry.com/ |
Geneological information. Some information is searchable for free, while other searches require a paid subscription. |
Find those heirs. |
| Ecola Newsstand Address: http://www.ecola.com/ |
Links to newspapers and other English-language media sites. |
Excellent information in a text-based format. |
| Crescendo Address: http://www.crescendosoft.com/ |
Crescendo is a planned giving software product. This page includes the "rate of the month" for calculating the income and remainder interest values for charitable remainder unitrusts. |
Although the software itself is marketing-oriented, the site is useful, especially for quickly obtaining the AFR. |
| The ABA's Links to State Ethics Rules Address: http://www.abanet.org/adrules/ |
This page has links to each state's ethics rules regarding lawyer advertising, soliciting and marketing -- including Texas. |
Has a neat-o map showing Texas as "unique." I'll say. |
| CLEOnline.com Address: http://cleonline.com/ |
Get those last three hours of continuing legal education you need without leaving the office from this Texas-based company. |
Easy and relatively inexpensive. |
| LawInfo.com Address: http://lawinfo.com/ |
A consumer-oriented legal site that lists lawyers for free (and lists them more prominently for a fee). |
Consumer-oriented legal information. |
| New Court City Address: http://www.courtcity.com/ |
This is a consumer-oriented legal site with forms and research tools. |
Too consumer-oriented to be of much help for lawyers. |
| FindForms.com Address: http://www.findforms.com/ |
A site which indexes free legal forms available on the web. This is what your clients are using to do do-it-yourself wills, etc. |
Hit and miss. |
| Banister Financial, Inc.'s Site Address: http://www.businessvalue.com/ |
In addition to information about this business valuation firm, there are substantive articles on business valuation techniques. |
The articles on business valuation may be useful. |
| Vaughan Henry's Charitable Remainder Trust Planning Page | This site has links to many sites in the charitable giving/planned giving area, including a free download of an estate and gift tax calculator. |
Lots of useful links. |
| Other Texas Sites of Interest | ||
| Obelisk Communications, Inc. | Information on lawyers and the internet, including marketing your practice via web sites. |
Practical advice on web site design and Internet ethical issues. |
| Harris County Appraisal District Address: http://www.hcad.org/ |
Harris County's tax appraisal records. |
An excellent local tax site. |
| Bexar Appraisal District Address: http://www.bcad.org/ |
Bexar County's tax appraisal records. |
Another good site. |
| Texas State Comptroller Address: http://www.window.state.tx.us/ |
This site has lots of useful information, including state inheritance tax forms and appraisal district information. |
Good general information about Texas. |
| The State of Texas Web Site Address: http://www.state.tx.us/ |
LOTS of information about Texas and Texas government. For example, census information, sales tax receipts and maps of each Texas county are available. |
Good general information about Texas. |
| TaxNet USA -- Texas Appraisal Districts Online Address: http://www.taxnetusa.com/ |
This site used to offer free appraisal information, but it appears to be all subscription-based now. |
Fee-based stinks. |
| Search Engines | ||
| Dogpile Address: http://www.dogpile.com/ |
Dogpile is a multi-engine site that
searches Yahoo!, Lycos' A2Z, Excite Guide, GoTo.com, PlanetSearch, Thunderstone, What U
Seek, Magellan, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite & AltaVista all at one
time. It also offers searches of usenet, ftp, stock quotes, business news
and other selected news wires. |
This site saves a lot of time when searching matters which are not legal-specific. |
| Yahoo Address: http://www.yahoo.com/ |
Yahoo is an old favorite. It is an indexed search service, rather than a full-text search engine, but it often is a good place to start, since it categorizes the sites in a logical way. |
A good place to start for general research. |
| c|net search.com | Search 700+ search engines at one time. |
Can't think of one that's not listed. |
| Search Engine Watch Address: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ |
This site lists the major search engines, including industry-specific engines. It also offers search tips. |
Good info. |
| LawCrawler Address: http://www.lawcrawler.com/ |
LawCrawler performs text searches on law-related web pages. |
This site, supported by advertising, is excellent. |
| FindLaw Address: http://www.findlaw.com/ |
FindLaw is an index-based guide to legal resources on the Internet. Searching FindLaw is like searching Yahoo -- you search the index. FindLaw's cousin, LawCrawler, searches the text on pages -- like an Alta Vista search. |
Advertising pays for this free, very good national resource. |
| LawRunner Address: http://www.lawrunner.com/ |
LawRunner uses the Alta Vista search engine to do legal-specific searches. It includes search templates to assist the user. For example, it makes it possible to do Texas-specific searches. It also offers links to selected legal databases. |
This engine is harder to use than some, but useful after mastering the learning curve. |
| LawResearch Address: http://www.lawresearch.com/ |
LawResearch is a commercial, subscription-based service, but it offers some useful free links and a free email newsletter with new, interesting links. |
Some good free information and the free monthly email newsletter occasionally turns up good links. |
| Links, Links and More Links Many of the sites mentioned above have extensive links. Here are other sites with particularly thorough and/or useful links: |
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| The UT Law Library's "Essential Sites for Texas Lawyers" Address: http://www.law.utexas.edu/cle/ |
Excellent links to primary and secondary sources of interest to Texas lawyers. |
This is a first-rate, easy to understand guide to primary and secondary sources, with a Texas angle. |
| Nation's Legal Links | Houston attorney Howard L. Nation's links probably are the most extensive in Texas. |
This site is loaded with links. |
| Estate Planning Links.com Address: http://www.estateplanninglinks.com/ |
Originally started by Dennis Kennedy, a Missouri lawyer, this is a comprehensive list of estate planning sites. |
A good list of links. |
| Consultweb.com's
Legal Resource Links Address: http://www.legalresourcelinks.com/ |
A leading large list of legal links. |
A good list of links. |
| Katsuey's Legal
Gateway Address: http://www.katsuey.com/ |
More legal links. |
A good list of links. |
| Dodge, Fazio, Anderson & Jones, P. C.'s Legal and Government
Information Page
Address: http://www.texasatty.com/gov.html |
This page, maintained by the Dallas firm of Dodge, Fazio, Anderson & Jones, P. C., is a comprehensive list of government sites -- with links, of course. |
A good list of links. |
| willyancey.com Address: http://www.willyancey.com/ |
Will Yancey, who is a CPA at TCU, has many useful links on his page, although many of the links are geared more to accounting than law. |
Lots of good tax information. |