A DOZEN DOCUMENTS YOU NEED BEFORE YOU DIE It is no longer enough to just sign some papers establishing an estate plan. You also have to make your heirs aware of your estate plan and advise them where the documents can be located. Also some of the country’s largest insurers are failing to pay out
ESTATE PLANNING FOR SECOND MARRIAGES In our world of ever-changing laws, estate planning has become increasingly complex. This is especially true in the context of second marriages. Children from a prior marriage, strained family relationships and rights and restrictions imposed by law illustrate why the complexity of estate planning for second marriages is never simple.
“Probate” is the process of identifying and gathering a decedent’s assets, paying taxes, claims and expenses, distributing assets to beneficiaries and the wrapping up of a decedent’s affairs in a court supervised setting. Probate provides a means for those interested to make any claims, valid or invalid, in a fair structured process. Properly followed, it
Senate bill S2899 has been introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would establish the federal estate tax rate to be 40% on all estates worth $3,500,000 but less than $10,000,000, and 50% on all estates in excess of $10,000,000 but less than $50,000,000. Thereafter the estate tax rate would be 55% on estates in
Bequeathing a large amount of money to multiple generations of your family has long been a controversial issue; but this approach to wills and trusts is suddenly getting more popular. The 2010 Tax Relief Act made it possible to fund $5 million-plus trusts per person without incurring as big a tax bill as in the
The general rule governing the proceeds of any life insurance contract insuring the life of an individual is that the proceeds are not taxable, so long as the proceeds are payable to one or more named beneficiaries and not the estate. Some other principals regarding life insurance are: The proceeds are also non-taxable if paid
Time may be running out for one of the biggest tax breaks for Americans: the chance to gift up to $5.12 million to heirs tax-free and then pay “only” 35 percent gift tax on a gift above that. The break is scheduled to expire on December 31, 2012. The original $5 million limit was increased
In 2010, taxpayers and their advisers were presented with a real gift from Congress – an increase of the estate tax exclusion to $5 million and a corresponding increase to the lifetime gift exclusion from $1 million to $5 million. This window of opportunity came with a short shelf life, with both provisions set to
As of February of 2010, the United States enjoyed more than a month of complete repeal of the federal estate tax. Before its repeal, the federal estate tax was almost as old as the U.S. income tax which required the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to adopt. The 2010 repeal of the federal estate
Tax attorneys work daily to create income tax schemes that wind up being incomprehensible to most people. Along with this, accountants devise incomprehensible rules and regulations regarding the gift and estate tax. Luckily, the inconsistencies between income tax rules (one part of the Internal Revenue Code) and the gift and estate tax rules (a different