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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Private Annuity Trusts: New Rules
Just as last month’s discussion of private annuity trusts was mailed, the government issued proposed regulations restricting the strategy. Though intended to stop transactions considered by the IRS to be abusive of the tax law, the regulations go further and make private annuity trusts generally unattractive. Recall from last month’s discussion that a private annuity […]
How Simple Estate Planning Can Avoid Family Dramas
A family drama has been playing out in the pages of major New York newspapers. The stories revolved around 104-year-old Brooke Astor, an heir of perhaps the first “richest man in America,” John Jacob Astor. The story became public when her grandson sought to have his father removed as caregiver and guardian, claiming that his […]
New Estate Planning Rules on IRAs and Trusts
The IRS recently made it easier to use a trust with your IRA to protect assets for future generations. You still should use an Estate Planning attorney to ensure things are done properly, but the new ruling adds more certainty than we had in the past. The type of trust people most often want to […]
How to Help Grandkids Stay Solvent
In last month’s visit we discussed how to educate children and grandchildren to start them on the road toward financial independence. This month, let’s discuss how to help youngsters who already are in the working world and perhaps have started to dig themselves into that financial hole of high debt in which so many people […]
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Types of Trusts and Reasons for Using Them
Trusts are not used primarily for reducing taxes any more. And trusts are not only for the wealthy. The non-wealthy are more financially sophisticated and have more wealth than in the past. The non-wealthy turned to trusts in recent years and for reasons other than tax reduction. In this part of the visit, we’ll review […]
Estate Planning Mistakes – How to Avoid Mismanagement of Inheritance by Heirs and Beneficiaries
Many estate plans ultimately fail. The problems are not with the plans. The owners spent a fair amount of time and money preparing and executing the plans. The problem with many estate plans is the final stage. The heirs are not prepared to receive the wealth. So they mishandle it. Or they did not know […]
How to Put Together a Disaster Recovery Document Kit for your Estate Plan
The 2005 hurricane season caused many people to focus on an issue that had seemed remote. But millions of people realize they are more vulnerable to disasters than they had thought. A surprise to many people is that the potential damage to their persons and property is not the only concern. Personal information and documents […]
How Planned Disclaimers Can Improve an Estate Plan
A key to successful Estate Planning these days is flexibility. Scheduled changes in the federal estate tax, and the possibility of additional changes, make flexibility essential. In past visits we have discussed language that can be included in wills to increase flexibility. Another tool to make available to your heirs is the disclaimer. Normally, disclaimers […]
