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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What Happens to Your Debts on Death?
There’s been a lot of attention lately to the issue of what happens to a person’s debts after he dies. It seems there are firms that specialize in collecting the debts of the deceased, often by telling survivors they need to pay and often by not being completely honest. We’ll have more detail in a […]
Estate Planning – The Giving, Asset-Shifting Opportunity
A unique wealth and Estate Planning opportunity presents itself to many people in 2012. It could be the last year for such an opportunity, so take advantage if it applies to you. A deal was reached in Washington in December 2010 to reduce estate and gift taxes for 2011 and 2012. Among other things, a […]
Estate Planning Tips for Surviving Spouses
Life can be difficult and complicated for surviving spouses. Contending with some financial rules and procedures in addition to everything else can amount to piling on. Yet, widows and widowers need to make key decisions about their finances, and some decisions need to be made within deadlines. Social Security, IRAs, employer retirement plans, and investments […]
Estate Planning Lessons for Grandkids from the Crisis
The bubble, its bursting, and the continuing financial crisis provided many lessons in personal finance. The biggest beneficiaries can be today’s young people, if they learn the right lessons. News reports and some surveys indicate that some are taking away the right ideas, but others are drawing the wrong conclusions and making their futures more […]
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Expand the Scope of your Estate Planning
Estate Planning is not about taxes. There was a time when it was, because relatively modest estates were depleted by taxes. Now, only about 5,600 estates a year are estimated to owe federal estate taxes, at least through the end of 2012. Yet, you need a complete, up-to-date estate plan more than ever regardless of […]
New Estate Tax & Social Security Rules, Limits
Inflation and other factors triggered some tax and benefit changes for 2012 announced recently by the IRS and Social Security Administration. The exempt amount for estates and gifts increases because of inflation. The estate of anyone dying in 2012 excludes up to $5.12 million from federal estate taxes. The annual gift tax exclusion remains at […]
Writing Family Love Letters for Estate Planning
The typical result of an Estate Planning strategy is a collection of legal documents with sterile discussions of trusts and property distributions. It need not be that way. Your estate planning and your legacy can be enhanced by adding to your plan documents that are more personalized and speak directly to your loved ones. Certainly […]
How to Close a Major Gap In Most Estate Planning Strategies
Some people with estate plans do some-thing that is almost as bad as not having a plan. They avoid key decisions in their plans. The result can be the same as having no estate plan: Potential problems for loved ones, including loss of wealth and family disharmony. Once people start on an estate plan, they […]
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