Estate Planning
Estate Planning is the process of determining how your wealth and assets should be transferred to the heirs of your choice: your children, grandchildren, friends, families, charitable causes, etc. and then deciding which legal tools and structures to use to best meet your estate planning goals.
Estate planning is not simply reducing or eliminating taxes and avoiding probate. Only after establishing how you want your estate’s assets to be distributed should you consider ways to reduce taxes and avoid probate. From there, good estate plans deal with a host of other issues. Now, with all but a few estates exempt from the federal estate tax, those other issues are, or should be, at the forefront of estate planning.
An estate plan is to ensure that you are taken care of the rest of your life and that your wealth is transferred to the people you want to have it. A good estate plan ensures these goals are accomplished with as much efficiency and as little cost as possible. An estate plan addresses the management and distribution of an individual’s property and financial obligations after he or she dies with financial tools such as wills, revocable living trusts and power of attorney.
For a comprehensive overview of Estate Planning, please start with our article:
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Bob’s Journal
Stocks might be beginning one of their periodic rotations. We could be seeing a shift from recent winners to recent losers. Another way to view the change is as a shift from growth stocks to value stocks. For some time, a few sectors outperformed the market indexes, and a few of the stocks in those […]
6 Key Issues about Gifts to Children and Grandchildren
One of the questions I receive most frequently from Retirement Watch subscribers is how to make estate planning gifts. Let’s take a look at the issues that recur among many readers. Gifts to family members are one of the staples of estate planning. But the tax law has changed, and that’s altered the role of […]
Estate Planning Without Wills & Trusts – Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, I shared some of the avenues through which you can ensure transfer of assets without the need for wills and trusts. So this week, let’s continue the discussion with more ways to avoid probate and transfer property… starting with: Bank accounts. Though once obscure, payable on death (POD) bank accounts […]
How to Manage Your Estate Planning without Wills, Trusts, and Probate
You might be surprised to learn that many Estate Planning goals can be accomplished without wills and trusts. In fact, using other tools can spare you some of the expense and complications of wills and trusts. These strategies also cause the assets to avoid the delay and expense of probate, transferring the title of each […]
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Estate Planning to Improve Your Financial Power of Attorney
It’s one of the most overlooked and understated pieces in most peoples’ estate plans… The Power of Attorney. And it’s so much more than simply deciding who manages your affairs when you can’t. So today let’s review more tips on how to navigate this vital step in the estate planning process. Which actions can the […]
Bob’s Journal
I hope each of you had an excellent July 4 holiday. In this holiday-shortened week, let’s diverge from our usual Bob’s Journal entry. This week let’s take a look at a crime that has touched or scared almost everyone: identity theft and cybercrime. I share the insights from a published interview with Frank Abagnale, author […]
Lining up Your Cash Sources for the Next Emergency
One key to a successful retirement is being able to handle the surprises. You don’t know when the surprises will come or what they will be, but you can bet retirement will have surprises. A sharp market downturn is one possible surprise. A wide range of large, unplanned expenses also is possible: home repairs, auto […]
What Every Spouse Needs to Know about Inheriting IRAs
One of the most difficult financial tasks facing a surviving spouse is how to handle the individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other qualified retirement plans. Mistakes often are made with inherited IRAs, whether they are inherited by spouses, children or others. It is understandable. Retirement accounts are treated differently than most other assets in the […]
