Record Online.com: If you or a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's or another cognitive disease, it is important to meet with an elder law estate planning attorney as soon as possible.
An Alzheimer's diagnosis is shocking and overwhelming to all concerned. Immediate care-giving and medical issues take center stage. But if legal matters are left untended, you risk losing your home and life savings as the disease progresses.
The Lowell Sun: Today, more than ever, charitable institutions stand to benefit as the first wave of the baby boomers reaches the stage where they're able to make significant charitable gifts. If you're like many Americans, you too may have considered donating to charity. And though writing a check at year-end is one of the most common ways to give, planned giving may be more effective.
What is planned giving? Planned giving is the process of thinking strategically about charitable giving to maximize the personal, financial and tax benefits of your gifts. For example, you may need to receive income in exchange for the assets you donate, or you may want to be involved in deciding how your gift is spent — things that typically can't be done with standard checkbook giving.
Boom! Boomers & Beyond: Where there’s a will . . . there are relatives. This truth, proved time and again in probate proceedings and will contests, holds a clear lesson: Good estate planning is about more than taxes. It requires careful consideration of who should receive your assets, and how and when they should receive them, as well as a clear statement of your wishes and expectations.
Smart Money: You have to hand it to Congress: It's doing its best to turn one of the more wearying parts of retirement planning — getting your estate in order — into something of a party. The challenge for you and me is to stay clearheaded.
The Tax Relief Act of 2010, passed in December, made headlines primarily for retaining the Bush-era income tax cuts. But lawmakers also approved changes in estate and gift taxes that left lawyers and accountants gushing. (“Unprecedented.” “Historic.” “Astonishing.”) Most notably, the gift-tax exemption jumps from $1 million to $5 million, which means Americans can now bequeath the latter amount without paying a dime in taxes. This exemption is separate from the annual gift-tax exclusion, currently $13,000.
Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog: Owning a vacation home in Mexico or retaining Canadian citizenship are just two scenarios that can create complex estate planning and tax issues. Below are five scenarios that can affect estate planning in a global economy.
1. Owning a home in Mexico
A home in Mexico is likely acquired through a fideicomiso (similar to a trust), and the IRS considers fideicomios to be trusts that are subject to reporting requirements for foreign trusts. As a result, homeowners must file Form 3520 and 3520-A every year to stay in compliance with IRS regulations. Additionally, after March 18, 2010, homeowners who use or let relatives use the home are subject to income tax on the property’s fair rental value. Owners have until August 31, 2011 to come into compliance with the IRS regulations.
Wall Street Journal: It isn't enough simply to sign a bunch of papers establishing an estate plan and other end-of-life instructions. You also have to make your heirs aware of them and leave the documents where they can find them.
Consider: At least 10 states have been investigating whether some of the country's largest insurers are failing to pay out unclaimed life policies to beneficiaries. California and Florida have held public hearings on the issue in recent weeks.
Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog: As I previously blogged, taxpayers can now convert a 401(k) or IRA to a Roth IRA and give their grandchildren up to $5 million without incurring the generation-skipping tax. However, this tax break may close before 2013 if Congress does not act soon.
Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog: Two changes to the tax code now give investors with large 401(k) accounts the ability to give their grandchildren a tax-free inheritance of $400 million or more. Congress created this estate-tax break in two steps last year…
Sun Herald.com: Who gets Mom's wedding ring? When siblings look at what a parent leaves behind as their inheritance, it's not always easy to sort out who gets what.
Washington Times: You don’t have to be Leona Helmsley to want the best for your pet after you die.
Helmsley left her dog, Trouble, $12 million when she passed away in 2007. A judge cut the award to $2 million and awarded some of the money to her grandchildren, but the Maltese still lived a life of luxury until his death in December. The dog’s death was announced this month by the Helmsley trust.
Pet estate planning has grown since Helmsley’s will made headlines. Today, there are retirement homes for pets across the country, and at least 45 states allow for pet trusts. A pet trust is an agreement that specifies how an owner wants a pet to be cared for, including details on who will be responsible for the animal and how the care will be paid for.
Forbes.com: Do it yourself estate planning? Would you also perform surgery on yourself? How about representing yourself in court – even with a couple of seasons of “Law & Order” under your belt?
With the help of Google and other search engines, we’ve become a society of “do-it-yourselfers” where seemingly everyone can repair a leaky shower, diagnose a medical condition or resolve a thorny legal matter. In the legal and estate planning community, practitioners have seen even relatively wealthy clients, who stand to benefit the most from expert planning advice, use consumer software to draft their own documents. Generally they are successful – at least as long as they are alive! Most will never know the woeful inadequacies of their self-drafted documents – this knowledge will ultimately reside with their families, often as they incur enormous legal fees on unsuccessful attempts to exact post-mortem modifications. There are dozens of websites that profess to offer you sage advice at a fraction of the cost of professionals. The problem is they usually can’t.
Yahoo! Finance: Surprise: This tax-savvy strategy can be used whether or not you convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.
I was a guest on an estate planning radio show recently when a listener from Traverse City, Mich., phoned with an eye-opening question. “Do I have to convert a traditional IRA to a Roth to make it a ‘stretch' IRA?” she asked.
Estate of Denial: A messy legal dispute over the publication rights to many of John Steinbeck’s famous works was denied further review by the Supreme Court, the justices announced Monday.
The legendary author’s only surviving son and sole grandchild filed notice seeking to regain control of the copyrights that had been signed away in 1938. But lower courts have ruled that the pair’s application is invalid because of an agreement Steinbeck’s third wife Elaine made 17 years ago.
Over the years, Congress has passed several laws allowing for artists or their heirs to assume control over copyrighted work decades after the fact. The laws were created as an acknowledgment that creative works often don’t realize their full commercial value until well after their initial publication.
24-7 Press Release.com: It is true that trusts are invaluable tools for those with a large amount of assets. Trusts can help to avoid estate and gift taxes; they can put conditions on the money in the trust fund to prevent large amounts of money being available to someone too young to manage it wisely. Trusts can also be a great tool for charitable donations. However, trusts are no longer just the overly complicated tools of the wealthy. From taking care of assets that are difficult to liquidate, such as real estate or a business, to providing for a child with special needs, trusts are a straightforward tool that many people should discuss with an estate planning lawyer.
Lorain County Moms.com: Moms and dads plan for family trips, college and weddings, but life sometimes throws a curve called autism.
And it’s hitting more and more families. An average of one in every 110 children in the United States has an autism spectrum disorder.
These neurodevelopmental disorders can make communication and social interaction difficult, sometimes impossible, for those who struggle with them.
Autism poses yet another challenge for parents, though, one that requires a different set of experts. Parents must pencil out how they will pay for everything that is needed sometimes for a child’s lifetime.
WealthCounsel: Good article summing up the different stages people go through in their life and the role estate planning plays in each of these stages to protect wealth:
“Life is transition. Every day there is some experience that causes us to stop and think about financial and legal alternatives including all their ramifications. Having a “transition team” consisting of a trusted financial advisor, certified public account and legal professional can make life’s transitions less complex and overall more rewarding.”
Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog: Many people have the same regrets when it comes to their life decisions. Below are the five most common regrets people make on their deathbeds according to Bronnie Ware, a woman who cared for the dying for many years…
Forbes: Are you thinking of making a strange request in your will? Check out 10 strange requests some celebrities made in their last will in testament.
Investopedia: The article provides a list of six estate planning documents everybody should have and gives a general description of each. For a more in-depth analysis and description of each of these documents view the KEYTLaw estate planning library.