Learn if you need to go beyond basic estate planning and what techniques are available to protect your assets and your spouse and other beneficiaries, minimize or eliminate estate taxes, meet your charitable goals and transfer your wealth efficiently to the next generation.
There is a common misconception that you must be wealthy to need advanced estate planning. This is true is some cases but not in others. While basic estate planning involves creating a plan for what happens if you become disabled and a plan for what happens after you die, advanced estate planning goes beyond these basics in several ways.
During the creation of your foundational estate plan, your attorney will be able to determine your need for planning beyond the basics. Learn what factors your attorney will consider when assessing your need for more advanced estate planning.
For those people with taxable estates, advanced estate planning above and beyond a foundational estate plan is one of the options for minimizing estate taxes after they die. Aside from this, advanced planning can be used to perpetuate family values and protect assets for the benefit of future generations.
In this election year, the federal estate tax is truly up in the air. Currently the federal exemption from estate taxes and estate tax rate are supposed to change as shown in the "Federal Estate Tax Schedule."
Whether your estate will be liable for estate taxes depends upon the value of your gross estate, the amount of debt owed by you at the time of your death, the total expenses that will be incurred while settling your estate, and any deductions that your estate can take. Here's how to get an estimate of your estate tax liability.
Where the federal estate tax will go beyond 2009 is entirely up in the air. Under current law, the tax is scheduled to completely disappear in 2010. But don't be surprised if the federal estate tax not only sticks around but ends up taking a significant chunk out of your beneficiaries' pockets.
With the economy still in a tailspin and money becoming tight, asset protection has become a hot topic in recent months. So what is asset protection and how can you make an asset protection plan that will work for you and your family?
With the U.S. economy in distress and property foreclosures at all time highs, lately asset protection has become a hot topic. But what exactly is it, and how can you protect your assets?
Asset protection for your own assets while you're alive when compared with asset protection for your spouse and other beneficiaries after you die are two different things.
Have you created an estate plan that provides asset protection for your spouse after your death? If you and your spouse still have simple "I Love You" wills, or if you and your spouse do not have any estate plan at all, then you should consider including AB Trusts as part of your estate plan for the following reasons.
A very important aspect of planning your estate should be creating a plan that will protect your children or other beneficiaries from creditors, lawsuits, and divorcing spouses after you are gone. This can be easily accomplished by setting up lifetime trusts for the benefit your beneficiaries instead of leaving your property outright, in stages, or at specific ages.
At some point every business owner will want to "exit" their business. Many times, however, the owner won't be able to leave voluntarily. Without a proper business exit planning strategy, the involuntary loss of a key person can devastate a business by forcing liquidation during a chaotic time. Here are the six steps to follow to create a sound plan for exiting your business.
When it comes to understanding trusts, knowing the difference between revocable and irrevocable trusts is crucial. If you ask for a revocable trust and get an irrevocable one, or vice versa, the legal and tax consequences will be significant.
Here you will find quick links to information about a variety of advanced estate planning trusts.
Married couples can maximize the use of both of their federal exemptions from estate tax by using AB Trusts as part of their estate plan. Here's how the AB Trust system works.
Many people are not aware that all of the proceeds from their life insurance policies will be included their estates for estate tax purposes. Learn how to remove life insurance proceeds from your estate by using an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust, or ILIT.
A Qualified Personal Residence Trust, or "QPRT" for short, is a type of irrevocable trust that's designed to hold and own your primary or secondary residence and remove its value from your taxable estate. A QPRT works as follows.
Here you will learn how a Qualified Personal Residence Trust, or "QPRT" for short, works to remove a primary or secondary residence from the value of your estate and preserve it for the benefit of your heirs.
