Cumberland Legacy Law* provides the highest quality Estate Planning for clients in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Tennessee. Whether you need a sophisticated strategy for minimizing or avoiding estate taxes and providing maximum possible asset protection, or just a simple will or trust to ensure your assets are distributed in accordance with your wishes, or anything in between, we are here to help you and your loved ones.
We present seminars on a variety of Estate Planning and Elder Law topics; call us if you want to be on our seminar mailing list, or subscribe to our newsletter by jotting a quick note to us.
Nina Whitehurst, the owner of Cumberland Legacy Law, is a member of Wealth Counsel, Elder Counsel and the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys, all national estate planning attorney organizations. She is continually upgrading and updating her knowledge of estate planning law through seminars and being an active member of several estate planning attorney email list serves. Her husband, Brian Whitehurst, is the firm's marketing coordinator. Nina Lamothe is the firm's documentation paralegal.
*Cumberland Legacy Law is not a public legal aid society.
- Estate Planning
- Guardianship & Conservatorship Estate Administration, Health Care Directives, Trusts, Wills
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Rates, Retainers and Additional Information
No legal advice is provided prior to engagement. You will know when you have engaged an attorney because you will have signed a fee agreement and will have provided a deposit for legal fees.
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- Oregon
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- US District Court, District of Arizona
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- English: Spoken, Written
- Attorney
- Cumberland Legacy Law
- Current
- Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
- J.D. (1986) | Law
- Honors: summa cum laude
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- Arizona State University
- B.S. (1983) | Accounting
- Honors: summa cum laude
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- AV Preeminent Peer Rating
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- 2017-2023
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- ElderCounsel
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- National Association of Elder Law Attorneys
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- Siskiyou County Bar Association
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- Activities: President 2017-2018
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- State Bar of Tennessee # 037146
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- State Bar of Alaska # 1802010
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- State Bar of Colorado # 26720
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- State Bar of California # 159873
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- Activities: Business Law News, Business Law Section; Executive Committee, Business Law Section
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- State Bar of Arizona # 011030
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- 3 Common Probate Questions: Estate Planning Basics
- Cumberland Legacy Law Blog
- 6 Facets of Estate Planning That LGBTQ+ Couples Should Know
- Cumberland Legacy Law Blog
- 8 Frequently Asked Questions on Last Wills and Testaments
- Cumberland Legacy Law Blog
- Affordable Housing Options for Low-Income Older Adults
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- Do You Need a HIPAA Release?
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- Wills, Trusts and Nursing Home Asset Protection, Various
Medicaid Compliant Annuities vs. Promissory Notes in Crisis Planning | Elder Law Interview
- Q. My father is being financially exploited and is experiencing undue influence from my I brother and son how can I stop it
- A: You can file your own report with adult protective services. But chances are that will not bring any relief. The only real solution is to hire an attorney to petition the court to appoint you as guardian and conservator for your father. If you have limited means you might try your local legal aid society. But often they have limited resources themselves, and you end up having to hire an attorney in private practice. You would front the money for legal fees. If the case is successful you can usually get the court to agree that you can reimburse yourself out of the ward’s assets.
- Q. Can you cancel an irreversible trust
- A: Often the whole point of an irrevocable trust is to avoid having to sell the home to pay for care, thus ensuring that your children will at least inherit the home if nothing else. Your care is paid for out of savings and when that runs out then Medicaid picks up the tab. When you pass your designated heirs inherit the house and the house is NOT then exposed to Medicaid estate recovery as it otherwise would have been. Your attorney should have explained this to you. Do not dissolve this valuable protection without talking to an attorney who specializes in Medicaid preplanning.
- Q. Are there any significant disadvantages to having a TOD (transfer on death) agreement for one's brokerage accounts?
- A: Transfer on death designations can work well when everyone dies in the correct order. Unfortunately, that does not always happen. If a TOD beneficiary dies before the account holder passes, it can sometimes be unclear what happens next. If you have named a contingent beneficiary and that person has also predeceased you, that could result in a probate for that asset, the very thing you meant to avoid. So, it is important to keep TOD designations current, if you choose to go that route.
TOD beneficiary designations can result in a beneficiary inheriting funds outright that maybe should have been placed in a protective trust, such as a special needs trust or a spendthrift trust.
TOD beneficiary ... Read More
