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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Being Sure Your Will Does What You Want for your Estate Planning
As we roll into the last months of the year, many people take time to update their financial estate planning and put their financial houses in order. Revising or writing a will is an important part of the Estate Planning process. A will can decide who receives your property, on what terms they receive it, […]
Knowing When Community Property Laws Matter
Each state controls how estates within it are transferred and settled. That means there are 50 different estate laws in the U.S. (More when the territories are counted.) There are both major and minor differences between these laws. There really are two very different major systems. One group of states uses community property laws, and […]
Important Estate Planning Changes for Estates and Executors
A couple of changes quietly crept into the law recently. They are major estate planning events for some estates and executors. Congress passed and the President signed a temporary extension of the highway trust fund in late July. The law contains a few tax provisions designed to raise some revenue, and one of those changes […]
Why and How to Prove Your Legal Residence and Minimize Estate Taxes
Many states don’t like when people leave theri residence to live in other states. It’s nothing personal. The state governments need your tax dollars, and some states will do anything they can do retain as much of your taxes as they can. A state won’t stop you from physically leaving, but it will argue that […]
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Popular Tax Exemption Strategy Upheld
The IRS recently lost a Tax Court case involving an estate and gift tax exemption strategy that the IRS and some in Washington have been trying to eliminate. The estate planning strategy is known as the Crummey trust, named after the taxpayer in the case that originally approved it. The recent case not only upheld […]
Payoffs from Making Charitable Gifts Now
Estate planning often has multiple goals, especially in this era when most people don’t have to worry about federal estate taxes. Estate planning should be coordinated with your income tax planning and your income needs as well as your charitable gift giving plans. These needs and goals should be included in your estate planning along […]
Learning the Nuts and Bolts of Living Trusts for Estate Planning
Living Trusts are probably the most used way to avoid probate. They are mainstays of Estate Planning in states with expensive or time-consuming probate procedures. Last month we discussed the different ways of avoiding probate, including the advantages and disadvantages. This month we discuss the nuts and bolts of operating living trusts. In this discussion […]
Protecting, Storing Your Digital Documents
Many financial services firms now recognize the importance of digital assets and want to be key players in storing them. A number of firms now offer digital storage services they often call “vaults” for digital documents. These are promoted as highly secure digital filing cabinets on which you can store digital copies of all your […]
