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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There’s At Least One in Every Family
Almost every family has at least one, and that’s okay. Don’t try to hide it from your estate planner, because hiding the situation will make things worse than they could be. Once the fact is in the open, steps can be taken to make things better. The problem I’m talking about is a child who […]
7 Tools to Prefund Inheritances and Reasons to Exploit Them Now
The current lifetime estate and gift tax exemption is scheduled to be slashed in half after midnight on December 31, 2025. It’s time to put together your plan for that potential reduction in the exemption. A lot could happen between now and 2026. A majority in Congress might agree to continue the current exempt […]
The Most Important Document in Every Estate Plan
The most important part of your estate plan isn’t about taxes, investments, gifts, or other financial issues. The priority of every estate plan, for people of every age, is the medical care documents. These documents should be completed even if you’re still considering other issues in the plan. This critical part of the estate plan […]
Establish Your Two-and-a-Half-Year Plan to Slash Taxes
Time is running out. You need to develop and execute a two-and-a-half year plan to avoid the major tax changes that are likely to come. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, enacted in 2017, reduced taxes significantly. But to comply with congressional budgeting law, many of the law’s provisions automatically expire at the end of […]
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Your Financial Power of Attorney Might Need Upgrades
The financial power of attorney (POA) could be the most important document in your estate plan. Yet, many people don’t have one, and a high percentage of those with POAs have inadequate documents. Adverse results happen when you don’t have a POA or have a less-than-optimum document. The consequences can range from bills not being […]
The Forgotten Element of Estate Plans: Portfolio Restructuring
Simplifying and streamlining our portfolios and the rest of our finances should be an estate planning priority as we age. I learned this firsthand when I took over management of my parents’ finances. I was fortunate that my parents were still around and alert when I took over, so they could explain some things and […]
How to Make Your Most Important Decisions: Choosing Trustees and Executors
Estate plans consist mostly of documents, but whether or not a plan is successful usually is determined by the key people who administer it. Yet, decisions about who those people will be often aren’t made carefully. There are two key appointments for financial matters in most estate plans. One is the trustee or trustees of […]
Make Family Wealth, Businesses Endure Using the Vanderbilt Strategies
The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, a popular resort and tourist attraction, is a legacy of George W. Vanderbilt, the youngest son of the oldest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the builder of the Vanderbilt fortune. My wife, Elaine, and I enjoy visiting there. The Biltmore House, built primarily between 1895 and 1899, still is […]
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Executors and Trustees
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