In news that will surely pique the interest of any NY estate attorney, it seems that Huguette Clark has a will.  

AOL News reports that a spokesman for Wallace Bock, the NY estate attorney for reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, has revealed that the heiress does indeed have a will. Spokesman Michael McKeon said that the will "has been in existence for some time." However Mr. McKeon would not reveal who the beneficiaries of her will are.

He did say that in spite of speculations by the media that Mr. Bock has allegedly exerted undue influence that Ms. Clark is of sound mind. He said: "Over the years, Ms. Clark has made all of her own decisions--including insisting on her privacy. In short, she had lived her life the way she has wanted to."

It's a sign of hard economic times. Close to a third of U.S. households have no life insurance coverage. The Wall Street Journal reports that according to data provided by Limra, approximately 35 million U.S. households are not covered by life insurance policies, nor are they covered under one sponsored by their employer. The number indicates that the economy may be a factor. Limra speculates that with less wiggle room in household budgets, loss of employer-provided coverage due to layoffs, and employers cutting back on benefits, Americans are left with little or no life insurance coverage.

While the economy can be blamed for this, if you ask a NY estate attorney, he or she would tell you that investing in life insurance may save you from financial ruin in the case of a tragic death. According to the survey done by Limra, 3 out of 10 respondents said that they would be unable to meet living expenses if a primary breadwinner died. An additional 3 of the 10 said that they would be unable to keep up with expenses after a few months.

Wallace Bock, a NY estate attorney for the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, is facing an investigation over possible claims of mismanagement of Ms. Clark's money. The Gothamist reports that the Manhattan District Attorney's office recently questioned Wallace Bock's paralegal about a $10,000 dollhouse that Huguette Clark bought for Wallace Bock's granddaughter. There are also questions about an alleged $1.5 million in cash that Ms. Clark gifted to Mr. Bock for a bomb shelter in Israel in a community where Bock's daughter and grandchildren live.

The New York Post reports that Wallace Bock's colleagues were bemused by the generosity of the heiress. One year at the law firm's holiday party, his former paralegal Cynthia Garcia claims that he was given a mock will drawn up to look like the heiress' will naming him as a major beneficiary to the estate. Garcia claims that even after he realized it was a fake will, he kept it. Garcia alleges that after years of no contact, Bock recently called her to ask her not to talk about his dealings with Huguette Clark.

A Louisiana estate planning lawyer has pleaded guilty to six counts of theft in excess of $500 of funds belonging to his former clients. According to the New Star, Bernard Grenrood was ordered to five years probation and ordered to pay a total restitution of $106,200 to the clients that he stole from.

One such client's family claims that Grenrood possessed a decedent's life insurance checks which were written out to the decedent's children and grandchildren. He allegedly took those checks, wrote them out for himself, and transferred close to $32,000 from the decedent's checking account to his own trust account. The family claims that when they asked Grenrood where the checks were, he told them that they were stolen.

The New York Times reports that while most individuals are fretting over the estate tax lapse in 2010, they should really be taking advantage of the 2010 gift tax rates. Why is that? At 35 percent, a NY estate attorney would tell you that the 2010 gift tax rate is the lowest that it has been since the 1930s. While we have covered this topic before, it is important to bear in mind that the 2010 gift tax can save individuals on taxes. Steve Kunkel, director of taxes at CBIZ MHM told the New York Times: "People are so focused on the estate tax that they're not paying attention to this. People are looking beyond 2010, and in doing so they're going to miss some significant savings this year."

We often assume that we are going to live forever, but what happens when we pass away eventually? Will we have our estate plan in order? The New York Times Bucks Blog claims that most Americans tend to put off writing a will or planning their estates. While most Americans don't want to think about estate planning, if you actually plan ahead it's not only better for you, but it's better for your heirs as well.

Here are the 5 questions that the New York Times says that you need to ask a New York estate planning lawyer:

The mysterious heiress Huguette Clark has not only captured the attention of many a NY estate attorney, but also the attention of regular Americans across the country.

MSNBC.com readers contacted New York officials in order to get them to check on the welfare of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark. The welfare check on Huguette Clark will also be accompanied with a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney about how her finances are handled. After reading reports from MSNBC.com about the previous dealings of attorney Wallace "Wally" Bock and accountant Irving Kamsler, 140 readers felt compelled to contact Adult Protective Services.

NBC reports that Virginia State Police had to respond to a violent shootout in Louisa County over an inheritance fight this past Sunday. Police state that around 2:00p.m., they were called to a home on Twigg Drive for a family dispute. When police arrived, the issue was resolved and the police left the home. However, as a NY estate attorney can attest, when it comes to inheritance, sometimes disputes can't be easily settled.

Police say that over the course of the afternoon, tensions grew over the inheritance fight. At approximately 5:00 p.m., Charles Sponaugle Sr. started shooting his family with a .22 caliber target pistol. He shot and killed his son Charles Steadman, and his nephew Mark Cooper Sponaugle. He also shot and injured his sister, brother in law and two other nephews.

Frances Bean Cobain, the child of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, turned 18 years old on August 18. NBC LA reports that on her birthday, Frances Bean stands to inherit millions of dollars from a trust fund set up for her three years after her father's suicide in 1994. She is the sole beneficiary of this trust fund.

As a NY estate attorney would tell clients, a trust fund is typically set up for minors in order to protect their inheritance from creditors or future spouses.

The Wall Street Journal reports that agents trying to sell what is known as life insurance notes are getting into legal trouble. Life insurance notes or funds were introduced by firms who would buy life insurance policies from individuals, pay the premiums, and then pool them together with other policies. These were then sold as notes or funds to investors. Investors would get paid off when the insured individual died. In essence, their death benefits become an investor's payoff.

The controversial product never took off because of the macabre nature of it. Regulators didn't like the product and legislators felt it went against public policy because it allowed investors to profit from death.