Anytime a blended family includes children from prior marriages, estate planning becomes more challenging, as reported in The Meridian Star, in “Estate planning after a second marriage.” If there are young children, how can you ensure that the surviving spouse will take care of them? And what if you pass…
Utilizing intrafamily loans and trusts is one way that wealthy families can maximize their estate planning strategies. A recent issue of Barron’s features, “How Family Loans and Trusts Can Create Big Wins,” and outlines the specifics on intrafamily loans as an estate planning tool. The note has a fixed value,…
It’s not exactly what most parents would want their children to use their inheritance for, but we suspect that this mother would have been very proud of her son. John Bickman Walls told his son Pelle Walls, who was then 17, that his mother, Walls’ ex-wife, had committed suicide. Walls…
Naming a guardian for minor children is never a pleasant task, but this situation makes a compelling argument for why it is so important. A Texas Attorney General with legal problems was appointed guardian of a large trust for two minor siblings and certain facts don’t seem quite right. That…
A promise to give an inheritance that is not fulfilled in a will can be challenged, if the promise can be proven and if the court agrees. The nature of the promise made to one woman in Australia is a sad reflection of a troubled family, but it does illustrate…
The European Union has put into effect new rules on inheritance laws that allow people to select which country’s laws they want to have applied to their wills. Americans who own property in the EU that they wish to pass on through their estate need to prepare for this change.…
The word is out in the estate planning bar that the IRS is looking at making an announcement this September about a favorite tax benefit gained from the use of family partnerships and LLCs. New regulations would effectively raise the taxable value of assets transferred into these entities, which currently…
It is not unusual for wealthy parents to guide their children in their life choices while they are alive, and it’s also not unusual to control how heirs spend their inheritances. But using an inheritance as an incentive to reach specific benchmarks is a new one on us – and…
Estate taxes are seen by some as instruments of public policy, an attempt to fight economic inequality by diminishing the ability of wealthy families to aggregate vast amounts of wealth. Others see estate taxes as a “death tax” that penalizes those who are financially successful. Whatever your opinion, estate tax…
When a man who had remarried passed away, his children were less upset about his leaving everything to their stepmother as they were about her decision to liquidate the family home and furnishings. Rather than give them an opportunity to enjoy things that had special meaning to the children, she…