The media tends to place a great deal of focus on federal income tax, but despite that, the number of estates that actually pay this federal tax are proportionately small. Less than 12,000 estate tax returns were filed with the IRS in 2014, and of those, most of the estates…
In many cases, knowledge is power. But in estate planning, knowledge by itself can be a dangerous thing. You need to pair knowledge of the most common estate planning mistakes with another kind of knowledge: what to DO about those mistakes. And we would even add a third thing: knowing…
Certain celebrities continue to earn phenomenal amounts of money, even though they are deceased. Using advanced technology, audiences enjoy what appear to be live performances and new material from actors and singers who have been gone for decades. Holograms are good enough to convince stadiums filled with fans that they…
A state government has the legal right to claim the property of a person who has passed away and has no heirs or beneficiaries. Here's the problem: almost all state governments today are experiencing significant shortfalls in revenues. As a result, some states have become a little too eager and…
A lawsuit was filed against the Salinger Literary Trust by the Devault Graves Agency, a publishing house, in March 2015. The publishing company said that the trust was interfering with its ability to license its edition of a book titled J.D. Salinger: Three Early Stories that it wanted to publish…
Most married people tend to use the traditional way of owning property together, using "joint tenants with right of survivorship," known in estate planning circles as "JTWROS." Just as the name describes, when one of the spouses passes away, the surviving spouse becomes the sole owner of the property. This…
By law, every year the IRS must determine exemption limits for federal estate tax and the lifetime gift tax based on inflation. And every year, estate planning attorneys wait to hear the IRS' announcement of what the exemptions will be for the coming year. For 2015, the exemptions were set…
There was a time when irrevocable bypass trusts were highly favored by estate planning attorneys as one of the best estate planning methods for married couples. It worked like this: one spouse would fund the trust with an amount that was just under the estate tax exemption. At the time…
This is a great example of a failure to think outside of the box. Literally. A California man created a handwritten will that left all of his property to his wife if he were to predecease her. He also wrote that if they should both die at the same time,…
We’ve heard or read the stories of wealthy families forced to sell off prized heirlooms so that hefty estate taxes could be paid. It is never a happy day when an heir needs to sell the family home, wine collection, fine art or collection of vintage automobiles to raise cash…