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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Two Basic But Crucial Steps to Make Estate Planning Work
Some of the most important work on your estate plan doesn’t take place in the lawyer’s office. It doesn’t even involve the details of the will, trusts, Probate, powers of attorney, and the rest of the cornucopia of Estate Planning documents and strategies. Often the ultimate goal in estate planning is to ensure the wealth […]
Family Finances Miscommunication in Estate Planning
A new survey from Fidelity confirms what we already knew. Parents don’t tell adult children much about their finances or estate plans, but the parents think they’ve presented full details. Not having the discussions or delaying them leads to confusion, hampers planning, and eventually costs the family a lot of money and missed opportunities. The […]
Time to Update Your Digital Assets Estate Planning Strategy
Estate planning laws and practices are catching up with the reality of today’s digital world. It is a slow process and still has a way to go, but big strides recently were made. You need to review how your estate plan handles digital assets and decide if an update is in order. There are several […]
Improving Your Financial Power of Attorney
The financial Power of Attorney (POA) could be the most important document in your estate plan. Yet, many people don’t have one. Many people who do have a POA didn’t give it much thought and have inadequate documents. Adverse results can range from bills not being paid on time to trusted people committing financial abuse […]
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IRS Announces 2017 Estate, Income Tax Adjustments
The IRS announced the inflation-indexing of many tax provisions for 2017. The lifetime estate and gift tax exemption will increase to $5,490,000 from $5,450,000 for the estates of those who pass away in 2017. That gives married couples a potential joint exemption of $10,980,000. The annual gift tax exclusion remains at $14,000 in 2017, where […]
Enhancing Your Estate Planning Legacy with a Family Love Letter
Your estate plan is part of your legacy, but your legacy should be more than financial assets, material possessions and legal documents. For more and more people, the final touch to their estate plans is what sometimes is known as an ethical will. I call it a family love letter. Others have called it a […]
5 Best Options for Meeting Estate Planning Goals Without Wills and Trusts
Many Estate Planning goals can be accomplished without wills and trusts. 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 asset automatically to the person you intended. But these […]
Shrewd Ways fro Charitable Giving This Year and Beyond
Don’t wait until December to plan your charitable giving. Don’t do what can be even worse: Wait to make charitable gifts, especially cash gifts, through your estate. When you take either or both of those widely followed actions, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. That money could have benefitted you, your […]
