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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Estate Planning to Make Gifts While Avoiding Taxes
The estate tax is suspended for 2010, but the gift tax still is in place and will remain when the estate tax is restored. An advantage to adjusting your Estate Planning and making gifts in 2010 is the gift tax rate is its lowest in decades: 35%. Also the generation-skipping tax is repealed for the […]
Knowing What to Review Your Estate Planning Strategy
Congress still is dithering and debating what the estate tax will be after 2010. That’s no reason for you to procrastinate and delay starting a plan if you don’t have one or taking a look at your existing plan. There could be many dangers and pitfalls other than taxes lurking in your plan, and with […]
Knowing When to Revise Your Estate Planning Strategy
What do Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper have in common, other than being recently-deceased actors? Each left behind messy estate problems because he didn’t update his plan. It looks like attorneys will receive a nice piece of each estate and of the bank accounts of the contending heirs. You can find details in mainstream media, […]
Estate Planning for Avoiding Probate, Or Not
With the estate tax eliminated for 2010 and changes on the back burner until fall, this is a good time to take a look at another key element of Estate Planning. One of your key estate planning issues is to what extent, if any, your estate should avoid Probate. This is very different from decisions […]
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Using Summer Jobs to Create Roth IRAs as Estate Planning Start
More American teenagers than in recent years are seeking summer jobs this year (though fewer than in the old days). You can help make a summer job more profitable for your grandchildren and teach them about long-term Estate Planning at the same time. Or you can provide an additional incentive for the teenager who doesn’t […]
Roth IRAs for Estate Planning
There’s a lot of focus on Roth IRAs these days. Often overlooked is that for some people, however, a Roth IRA’s greatest benefit is as an Estate Planning tool. Before making a decision, consider carefully the potential estate planning effects of the Roth IRA and add those to any income tax benefits. While no estate […]
Why You Must Include Technology in Your Estate Planning
Technology needs to be part of your estate plan. I don’t mean the do-it-yourself tools available on the web to write a will or trust. I mean the technology you use regularly must be incorporated into your plan. The privacy policies and practices at most technology providers you deal with make it difficult for your […]
Knowing How Much of Your Estate to Give and When
The major issues in your estate plan are deciding who should receive your assets and how they should receive them (directly or through trusts, for example). Two other important issues that don’t receive as much attention are: How much wealth should you transfer sooner rather than later, and when should you give it? While these […]
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Estate Tax
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Gifts and Gift Giving
Grandchildren
Heirs, Beneficiaries, and Children
IRAs & Your Estate
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Probate
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Wills and Estate Planning
