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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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Everyone Needs an Estate Plan, and It’s Not About Taxes

April 15, 2014

Mickey Rooney passed away last week. He was a fabulously successful movie star in his prime and continued to perform most of his life. He was pitching products through infomercials the last few years. Yet, he apparently died with few assets to his name. This report alleges that he was abused and his money pilfered […]

Estate Planning

Giving the Best Estate Planning Financial Advice to Grandkids

April 1, 2014

The best thing you can do to ensure the financial security of your grandkids isn’t to give them money or wealth, though that would be helpful. Sound advice based on the latest research is what the younger generations need more of, and they aren’t likely to get that advice from their parents or schools. The […]

estate planning

Using Protection Trusts in Your Estate Planning to Help Heirs

March 1, 2014

“Great Fortunes Lost” was the title of an article in Fortune magazine some years ago. It described how various individuals, usually heirs, lost or squandered very large fortunes. Some of the individuals lost more than money. They lost their health or wasted their lives because of the effects wealth had on them. Many people I […]

Estate Planning Dangers in Inherited IRAs

February 1, 2014

People who inherit IRAs from somone’s Estate Planning need to be careful before they take any actions. They also need to be clear with the IRA custodian. Otherwise, the IRA might be inadvertently liquidated, triggering significant taxes. There are two mistakes commonly made by beneficiaries or custodians. After an IRA is inherited, it has to […]

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estate planning

How to Make Your Estate Planning Personal: Your Legacy and Ethical Will

January 1, 2014

Your estate plan doesn’t have to be only a bunch of documents drafted by lawyers. While the legal documents are essential, they don’t have to be the complete pack-age. You can wrap it up  by adding some personal touches to the plan. This touch often enhances both the plan and your legacy. You also might […]

A Case Study in Estate Planning Mistakes

December 24, 2013

Probably more estate planning mistakes are mistakes of omission instead of commission. Failing to take action or make the hard decisions causes a lot of problems. Here’s a case study from Forbes, though the family fortunately still has time to correct the mistakes. It involves the descendants of the creator of the children’s book character […]

Beware Asset Protection Trusts

December 24, 2013

Asset protection planners and several states have worked for the last couple of decades to develop trusts that will protect assets from creditors. The ideas were to make asset protection more affordable and also to keep in the U.S. assets that were being transferred to overseas trusts in jurisdictions with strong asset protection reputations. But […]

Updating the Bypass Trust for Estate Planning

December 1, 2013

Is the Bypass Trust dead? Many people believed when the lifetime estate tax exemption rose to $5 million per person (indexed for inflation), the role of bypass trusts in most Estate Planning strategies ended. Far from it. Under the current tax law the bypass trust can be turned from a powerful estate tax saver into […]

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