Judy Martel is a senior editor at Bankrate.com and a Certified Financial Planner who has written about wealth for the past several years. She is the author of "The Dilemmas of Family Wealth: Insights on Succession, Cohesion and Legacy," published in 2006 by Bloomberg Press.

Prior to joining Bankrate, she was a freelance financial writer for magazines including Worth, Town & Country, Ladies' Home Journal and Vive. Before that, she was a vice president at Asset Management Advisors, a multifamily office and affiliate of SunTrust Banks Inc. She also spent 12 years as a newspaper reporter and editor on the East Coast and in the Midwest.

She earned a B.A. in journalism from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

E-mail Judy at jmartel@bankrate.com.

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