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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Estate Planning for Your Digital Assets
Changes are afoot in how digital assets figure into your estate plan. For years, great uncertainty existed in the handling of digital assets such as accounts for email, social media, banking, investments, photo and data storage, web sites, and more. We last discussed these matters in our June 2014 visit, but already a major change […]
Remembering Dr. Tom Stanley
You might remember a publishing phenomenon in 1996: The Millionaire Next Door. Dr. Thomas J. Stanley and Dr. William D. Danko spent a couple of decades studying America’s millionaires to help companies market to the affluent. Then, they wrote a book explaining how the rest of America could join the rolls of what they called […]
Probating Your Estate: Issues and Strategies
Do you want your estate to avoid Probate? If so, how should you avoid probate? Those are key questions that need to be answered as part of your estate plan. The answers often de-pend on where you live, how valuable your estate is, and the types of assets you own. Probate is a state and […]
Buildng the Complete Estate Planning Strategy
Many people think they have estate planing strategies but really don’t. I’m not talking about the many people who haven’t done any estate planning and don’t have even a basic will. I’m talking about people who have taken action on their estate planning and yet have plans that are woefully incomplete. There is more to […]
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A Frequantly Overlooked Key Issue in Estate Planning
Celebrities and the wealthy often provide important financial lessons for the rest of us. Often, the lessons are more important for the rest of us, because the wealthy usually have enough assets to over-come the losses from their mistakes. For others, one or two critical mistakes can severely reduce financial security. The latest important lesson […]
Another Estate Plan Gone Bad
The Benihana restaurant chain is not what it once was. One reason is that its founder had a poorly-thought-out estate plan that was rife with conflicts and sowed dissension and unhappiness. Here’s the story, another cautionary tale about the importance of taking the time to do an estate plan properly, especially when a business is […]
Choosing Executors Carefully, a Lesson from Disney
I regularly point out that naming the wrong people as executors or trustees can ruin even the best estate plan. Most people put little thought into these decisions, often casually naming their oldest adult child or sibling. They don’t realize the burden of being an executor or trustee, even for relatively simple estates. This article […]
What You Need to Know About Trusts for Your Estate Planning
You probably need at least one trust in your Estate Planning setup. It seems almost all estate planning has one these days. Many problems can be solved and goals achieved with the right trust. Trusts no longer are restricted to the very wealthy. Too many people are intimidated by talk of trusts. You don’t learn […]
