We all want to make sure our children are financially secure after we’re gone. But accomplishing this means more than just deciding what portion of your estate each child will inherit. It also means determining how and when each child will receive their inheritance. When you have a child with special needs – particularly when that child depends on government benefits like Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) - how you pass on an inheritance becomes an absolutely critical … [Read more...]
Should I Leave Everything to My Spouse?
You and your spouse live your lives as one. You’ve been together for years. It seems the simple solution is to just leave everything to each other upon your deaths. Unfortunately, in this situation, the simplest solution may not be the best. First, if you leave everything to your spouse, they will be estate taxed on it at their death. If together you have more than $1 million, or expect to have that much by the time you both die, that could be a problem, depending … [Read more...]
Why Women Hold the Keys to Successful Estate Planning
Some people still assume that, when it comes to financial and legal matters, women are not key players. However, this is entirely inaccurate. Women are most likely to be highly involved and greatly affected by estate planning. In recent generations, women have taken on a larger role in the financial arena. The number of women in the workplace has tripled in the last fifty years. Meanwhile, the real median income of women has increased by sixty-three percent, while … [Read more...]
If You Really Love Me, Don’t Leave Me Anything!
This sounds like an odd statement, but it may be very accurate. Leaving assets directly to children or other beneficiaries may cause them problems which could be easily avoided or reduced by leaving them the assets in trust rather than outright. Even if the child is a very capable adult, it is often better to leave the assets in trust. The child can receive the assets in trust and could be trustee of that trust. As trustee, the child could invest the assets as desired, … [Read more...]
Do-it-yourself Estate Planning: You Get What You Pay For
Self-help books are an ever-increasing segment of the American publishing market. There are books and software on everything from gardening to health care. There are even books and software out there that purport to allow an individual to draft his or her own estate planning documents. Some of these items are promoted by media personalities and others by purported experts. Some of these items have technical flaws. For example, the Elder Law Section and the Estate … [Read more...]
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