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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The Two Questions You Need to Ask
Investors were avoiding two key questions, but now they’re paying attention. It was easy to overlook these questions for more than a year, because we were in the sweet spot of the business and market cycles. Yet, that’s the time when it’s most important to probe these questions, and we’ve been doing that. Since mid-2016, […]
It’s Dangerous Not to Review Your Estate Plan after Tax Reform
Tax reform affects estate plans more than most people realize. In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the only direct change in estate and gift taxes was the doubling of the lifetime exemption amount. Though the IRS has yet to issue the official inflation-indexed levels for 2018, the individual lifetime exemption could be as high […]
Estate Planning Strategies: Pros & Cons of Power of Attorney vs. Living Trust
Which is the best way to protect your assets, smooth the transition of your estate, and make life easier for you and your heirs… Power of Attorney or revocable Living Trust? Truth is, most estate plans need both a power of attorney and a revocable living trust. So the better question is: Which one should cover the bulk of your assets? Over the […]
Maximizing Your Home Pension
The most neglected assets in retirement and financial plans probably are the family home and home equity. Even though these are among the most valuable assets most people have, they are, at best, an afterthought in planning. Home equity should be an integral part of your retirement plan, and that makes it what I call […]
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6 Estate Planning Strategies Affected by Interest Rate Changes
Interest rate changes should sway the choice or timing of some estate planning strategies. It’s a surprise to many people that fluctuations in interest rates affect the outcome of key estate planning strategies. Some strategies generate more benefits when interest rates are low, while others provide more benefits to you and your loved ones when […]
Higher Interest Rates Aren’t Slowing Borrowing
Rising interest rates aren’t causing pain for the economy yet. Many people, including Federal Reserve officials, were worried when the Fed started raising interest rates. They weren’t sure growth would be sustained when the zero-interest-rate policy ended. But it’s so far, so good. In fact, one could argue that zero interest rates were holding back […]
Few Changes for Estate Planning, IRAs in New Tax Law
The 2017 tax law doesn’t require many changes to your estate plan or IRA strategies. Though there are many changes proposed in Congress and in early versions of the law, few revisions affecting IRAs and the estate tax made it into the final version. A major change for IRA owners is the loss of the […]
Everything You Need to Know About Estate Planning Bypass Trusts & Irrevocable Trusts
Many observers think two popular kinds of trusts will no longer be needed. They’re wrong… in fact, these two trusts are as valuable as ever! Benefits that once were considered ancillary now are important to many estates. Though no longer created primarily for estate tax reduction, these two trusts can be essential to reaching other Estate Planning […]
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Estate Planning Strategies
Estate Tax
Executors and Trustees
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Gifts and Gift Giving
Grandchildren
Heirs, Beneficiaries, and Children
IRAs & Your Estate
Power of Attorney
Probate
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