This time of the year is a great time to revisit your estate plan, so you can ensure your legacy is protected for years to come.” Many of us set New Year’s resolutions to improve our quality of life. While it’s often a goal to exercise more or eat more…
Recent change in tax laws have many people rethinking their estate plans. Also, changes in the normal course of life make it a good idea for persons with estates that range from small to large to review wills, trusts, powers of attorney and beneficiary designations of insurance, IRAs, and other…
New rules and enforcement guidelines may render certain artwork not only illegal to export or import, but also unsalable within the United States. Houston is a very international city and residents have traveled the world, returning with valuable artwork. Valuing artwork is never an easy task. It gets all the…
Finally your will is finished, and you can sleep soundly knowing that your heirs will receive the assets that you intend. Right? Not necessarily. If you've got a will, you may feel like you are all set when it comes to your estate plans. But does your will have a…
I think it’s important for people to understand the consequences of inattention to legal matters and of not involving an attorney. “Penny wise and pound foolish” can be a particularly compelling adage when dealing with legal matters. More often than not, when an estate plan fails and litigation follows it…
Here are a few easy approaches that can reduce or avoid taxes, and are also effective wealth transfer techniques. Gifting makes up one of the pillars of estate planning. Strategic gifting can mean all the difference between a plan for family wealth that works and a plan that doesn’t. Forbes…
Worried about your adult children blowing through their inheritance? Two strategies can help holders of individual retirement accounts curb an heir’s impulse to “cash out.” You may have many assets to leave behind for your heirs. However, an IRA is unique enough to be easily squandered in taxes, as MarketWatch…
“I don’t believe in inheriting money,” CNN host Anderson Cooper recently told Howard Stern on Stern’s radio show. Added Cooper, a son of designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt: “I think it’s an initiative sucker. I think it’s a curse.” American attitudes toward inheritance seem to be shifting, partly by fiscal…
“This time it’s not about the beginning of life or how babies are made. It’s about the end of life — yours — and the many issues and decisions that will confront you and your children.” Back when the kids were kids, it seemed like the “birds and the bees”…
Under the President’s plan, in 2018 the tax would revert to the rates that were in effect in 2009. Budget buzz is spreading across Capitol Hill. For example, did you know that President Obama's proposed budget is seeking a reduction of the estate tax exemption back to $3.5 million? Just…