Estate Planning

In 2024, there are 18 states that have some form of death taxes.

While it is possible a trusted contact may provide you with some protection, it cannot replace a durable power of attorney.

In most cases, Schwab’s rules around durable powers of attorney help to protect the principal. However, the same rules can also impede the principal’s agent.

Estate planning is a task which is never useful until it is too late to do it.

Calculating the fair market value of property varies in difficulty depending on the type of property and the date of death.

Can I leave money directly to those 529 plans in my estate plan?

When an HSA is left to a non-spouse, the account stops being an HSA.

Interestingly, being a fiduciary though is not a job description as much as it is descriptive of the kind of job that you do.

An important part of the family’s emergency plan is to make sure you have a plan for when the financial spouse can no longer serve the family in that way, either because they are no longer interested or because of their incapacity.

Depending on your situation, outright beneficiary designations could be a cleaner estate planning solution.

If you have a charity among your heirs, there is the possibility for tax savings.

Not every custodian is willing to accept the complexity, but I am grateful that Schwab is.

Individuals with more than $5M may be served well from gifting to utilize the higher estate exclusions before they sunset.

Now non-nuclear family or friends who are more than 10 years younger than the decedent and in good health are never eligible for stretch provisions and must distribute the whole balance over 10 years.

You may or may not want to leave anything to your favorite charity. However, if you do, there are often advantages to using a Donor Advised Fund over designating the charity directly.

When family inheriting is not an option or you are not all that close with your relatives, sometimes it can be trickier to decide where to leave your estate.

“I may leave a list or other written statement expressing how I wish certain items of my tangible property to be distributed.” But how do I do that?

Oddly enough, how a trust inherits an IRA is as important as what it does with the IRA after receiving it.

“I’m moving to a state which does not recognize Tenants by the Entirety. What do I need to do?”

When it comes to legal, if your attorney is allowed to make the edit, you are allowed to make the edit.

Is what I’m accomplishing here worth sacrificing the step up in basis? If it is not, perhaps there is a better way to implement your estate wishes.

To preserve the portability of a deceased spouse’s exemption, you must file an estate tax return after the death of the first spouse even if you otherwise did not have to do so. The due date of the estate tax return is nine months after the decedent’s date of death.

The required IRA distribution in the year the account owner dies is called a Year of Death RMD.

There is a tangled web of rules and options. For any given family situation and set of desires, there is a best answer when it comes to meeting your wishes, minimizing the tax owed, and optimizing your estate plan.

People think about marriage differently. These views and more shape the way that people want per stirpes and per capita to work.

The short answer is absolutely yes you do. Here’s why.

For Inherited IRAs, all the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) rules are complicated. There is no easy case.

Yes, but if you have complex wishes, you should utilize paperwork.

A reader asks, “As her descendant and agent following the rules as written, it is my understanding that I could gift myself $14,000 each year. But can I really?”

I recently stumbled upon an interesting website called OK to Die which has resources for preparing for and dealing with either your own death or the death of another.

Although you can have second generation beneficiaries, the first non-spouse designated beneficiary is the last one to receive a new RMD divisor calculation.

Trusts are like Calvinball except that the government is trying to play referee. It is quickly confusing.

Sadly, we have to say no. Even though we won’t be your executor, we are still here to help your executor, trustee, and loved ones through the estate maintenance and settlement process.

Many executors, trustees, or even estate plans make careless mistakes which end up in Roth IRAs being distributed too quickly. Here’s a list of ways to prevent your estate plan from ruining your Roth.

Inherited RMD rules demonstrates the power and importance of beneficiary designations and why it is so important to set them.

Taking the smallest distribution each year will ensure the beneficiary achieves the maximum tax-free growth of tax-free income.

Funeral expenses are often a family’s fourth largest expense.

The estate tax return is definitely complex, but that’s because it has to account for the multitude of special rules that only apply to a few households.

An easy estate workaround is to set up a Donor Advised Fund as a Testamentary fund, meaning you aren’t funding it yet, but it will be funded upon your death.

The fact that we have an 80% “generous grandparent” tax is ridiculous.

Facebook added the “Legacy Contact” feature that allows you to designate a Facebook Friend of yours who you would like to gain access to your Facebook page after you have passed away.

The Virginia State Bar has even made a few variations of a simplified Advanced Directive free to the public on their website.

This style of Power of Attorney certainly gets the job done, but there are a few ways that the cookie-cutter POA most frequently fails to meet people’s wishes.

Most people are unaware that giving a gift can be a taxable event because they themselves have not yet experienced the tax.

David and host Rob Schilling discuss what estate planning is, why you want to do it, and explain some of the jargon.

These are just some examples of the creative beneficiary designations, but the important part is to dream big about what your wishes are.

The beauty of trusts is that they are very flexible, and an estate lawyer can help you craft a document that will follow your wishes and give you peace of mind.

Will substitutes sacrifice some of the customization of trusts but avoid the accounting complexities.

The shortest answer is yes, you can. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Here are the most common reasons that your plan might need to be updated or revised and what to do about them.