A Bucks County firm is hosting an event later this month focused on the unique estate-planning needs of LGBT people in Pennsylvania.
Flood Masiuk LLC will host a free wine tasting and estate-planning seminar at 6:30 p.m. June 19 at The Rosebank Winery, 258 Durham Road in Newtown.
Guests will be treated to wine and appetizers followed by a discussion with firm partner Joe Masiuk.
“It’ll be more social; there is a seminar part to it but it’s lighthearted, certainly not law school,” said firm marketing coordinator Theresa Keenan-Flite.
Keenan-Flite said the firm, which specializes in LGBT and special-needs estate planning, has delivered a number of similar seminars to targeted audiences.
“Joe really wants to get the information out there. He’s seen so much unfairness throughout the years, and he wants to level the playing field and knows that you can use legal documents to do that,” Keenan-Flite said.
With Pennsylvania legalizing same-sex marriage last month, Keenan-Flite said Masiuk’s talk will be timely.
While the new law changes the legal landscape for same-sex couples, it’s still imperative that couples put in place all the protections they can, Keenan-Flite said.
“Initially, we used planning so that same-sex couples could gain as much equal footing under the law that they could. Before, the state didn’t recognize your partner in any way, and now that you have a spouse, they will be recognized, so it does change a bit,” she said. “But, I think what we find is that, with many clients, especially those who may be up in age, or who may have lived a straight lifestyle at one point and have children from a previous relationship or a family of origin they want to leave their assets to, there is a need for planning. And there is still prejudice out there, so any way you can strengthen your legal bond, you should strengthen it. When marriage equality became legal in Pennsylvania, we were all so excited, but then it was like, wait a minute; now what? It’s a great thing, but you still always need to plan.”
Keenan-Flite said that, while the firm expects guests to be in the mid-40s, mid-career crowd, they would like to see younger folks starting to think about estate planning.
“This will probably draw mostly people who have established themselves, who have something to protect. But we would love everybody to be concerned about the future. We don’t call it estate planning as much as a life plan — thinking about what could happen, what may happen or what will happen and getting ahead of it.”
For more information, call 215-322-6330 or email [email protected].
