One of the big stories in estate planning circles in 2010 was the fact that the estate tax was repealed for the one year, but it was supposed to return in 2011 with only a $1 million tax exemption. Instead, congress in the eleventh hour of 2010 expanded the exemption to $5 million, and expanded [...]
When you look into the topic of wills on the Internet, you see any number of fill-in-the-blanks DIY will kits being offered, and this is very interesting. These days more and more people are choosing to do things for themselves that they once entrusted to professionals, and there are many motivations behind this trend. For [...]
They say that death and taxes are the two sure things, but who is to say that they should walk hand in hand? Critics like to call the estate tax the "death tax," and the label is more an accurate description than it is a mere sarcastic flippancy. When you think about it, the assets [...]
The field of elder law encompasses every aspect of aging from a legal and financial perspective, and one of the possibilities that must be addressed if you want to be prepared for any eventuality is that of incapacity. People are routinely living well into their late-eighties and beyond, and when you look at the statistics [...]
Estate planning is just one of the branches of the tree we call elder law, and it is an important one but there are other legal issues that are intrinsically intertwined with the process of aging as well. As life spans continue to grow longer and medical technology advances the possibility of a period of [...]
If you are concerned that estate tax exemption amounts may go up in future years, and you have an estate that exceeds those likely amounts, one of the primary objectives you will have when planning your estate will be to reduce the taxable value of your legacy for future generations, and the creation of a [...]
When you are engaged in the process of estate planning there are myriad legal and financial matters to address, and it all involves preparing your assets for transferal to your heirs upon your passing. When you see the term "your assets" most people think about monetary assets, but each human being has acquired something much [...]
When you are engaged in inheritance planning you basically have to answer two questions: who are the people you would like to provide something for, and what are you going to bequeath to each of them? When it comes to most hard assets it is largely a matter of dividing them up based on monetary [...]
When you break it down to its simplest form estate planning should be anything but complex. The basic objective is to take what is yours and pass it on to the people of your choosing at the time of your death--how complicated is that? Unfortunately things like the estate tax, capital gains tax, the gift [...]
Pleasant problems are good to have, but they still require solutions. When the value of your estate exceeds the estate tax exclusion, which is just $1 million in 2013, you have one of those pleasant problems and we would like to present a partial solution. Just about every successful person has learned the value of [...]
