Ancillary Probate: When It Is Used, Where It Occurs, and How To Avoid It Many people own property in more than one state, such as an ocean-side vacation home or a rental property in a former home state. It is important to think about how that property will be handled after you pass away. Through [...]
Does my Spouse’s Citizenship Affect my Estate? Noncitizen spouses are treated differently than US citizen spouses for estate and gift tax purposes. They do not get the unlimited marital deduction. Married US citizen spouses can generally transfer unlimited amounts of money between each other during life or upon death in various qualifying ways without any [...]
Why Title Matters Real estate can be owned in several different ways. The form of ownership, or how your property is titled, can determine how much control you have over it, how vulnerable your property is to creditor claims and lawsuits, and what will happen to it at your death. Individual Ownership One of the [...]
Estate Planning Strategies To Protect Your Spouse You found the love of your life, and as you have built your life together, you have likely weathered your fair share of storms and grown stronger because of them. Now that you are married, you are uniquely situated to provide meaningful support for your spouse after your [...]
Help Your Clients Clean Up Their Affairs with These Lists Clients Need An Inventory Of What They Own Before you can help your clients get to where they want to go on their wealth journey, you need to understand where they are right now. Doing so involves inventorying their assets (everything they own) and keeping [...]
Who Needs An Estate Plan? If you are reading this, you need an estate plan. Why? The short answer is that everyone age 18 and older needs an estate plan. It does not matter whether you are old or young, have built up considerable wealth or are just entering adulthood—you need a written plan to [...]
Beware of Trust Scams & How to Spot Them Trusts are widely used in estate planning to protect and transfer a person’s assets (money, accounts, property, etc.), sometimes in a tax-advantaged manner. Some trusts are highly complex, with multiple parties, intricate structures, specialized legal terms, and references to arcane tax law that can be difficult [...]
How To Give Real Property To a Loved One At Your Death Without Probate Court Involvement A home is often one of the most important assets that people own. Therefore, most people want to stay in their home until they die and then have a loved one receive it. One common way to pass a [...]
Be Careful Relying on Life Insurance to Provide for Loved Ones In an estate plan, life insurance can be used as a source of immediate liquidity for beneficiaries by offering a tax-free, lump-sum payment upon the insured’s death. About half of Americans have a life insurance policy. The primary reason people purchase life insurance is [...]
Wills, Trusts, & Dying Intestate: How They Differ Most people understand that having an estate plan benefits them and their loved ones. However, many individuals do not initiate the estate planning process because they do not fully understand the nuances of foundational estate planning tools such as a will and a trust and the full [...]
