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 recently offered a helpful list of strategies in an article titled “5 Family Gifting Strategies.” This article brings some important techniques front and center.
To make that wealth last forever, you're probably going to need future generations to replenish that wealth.
If you have wealth to pass on to the next generation, have you hoped that your wealth will continue on for generations to come? It's a tough goal to have, considering you'll be depending on the next generation to keep the wealth going instead of squandering it away. However grand your goals may be, there is a startling trend of inheritances that fail to lift up the family.
The startling trend of failed inheritances is known as "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves", and Reuters picked up on the issue in a recent article titled “How wealthy families blow their assets.” It seems the kinds of problems that can arise within a family are multifaceted, but the numbers tell a similar story: inheritances have a failure rate at 90 percent by the third year.
Dividing money is easy. But who gets Mom’s tea set?
When we hear about heirs fighting over an inheritance, most of us think about money as being the main issue. But money isn't everything! How you split up priceless family artifacts and other physical goods can start or end fights before they happen. So how do you plan to fairly spread the relics and keep the peace?
Sure, there are many inheritance fights over dollars and cents. On the other hand, there are even more fights leading to protracted probate battles and just plain old hurt feelings over the disposition of physical goods, relics and family keepsakes. Unfortunately, it can be more difficult to plan for the disposition of these “things” in contrast to cash.
Today, with smaller families and more women choosing not to have children, “the dynamic has changed pretty significantly for the generation of baby boomers. The option of doing something charitably significant with their estates is a change,” he said.
The New York Times recently touched on the subject of estate planning without a family. It is an important topic for those without future generations to inherit their assets. If this issue affects you or someone you know, then be sure to read the article titled “In Estate Planning, Family Isn’t Always First.”
In the beginning and in the end, estate planning is always about disposing of your assets. Both in popular imagination and in the laws on the books, this commonly means the how and why of giving it to family members. Nevertheless, even with no lineal heirs to inherit your assets, there remains important decisions to be made. Optimistically, this means the sky is the limit.
Medicare has published new rules spelling out the changes, and an education campaign aimed at healthcare providers began in January. But many healthcare providers haven't grasped it, either.
As you may know, Medicare has recently undergone a big change affecting long-term care and the availability of skilled nursing or therapy. Namely, thousands are now eligible for Medicare benefits, but you might just have to point that out to care providers.
The slow transition to full adoption of the rules and new standards of care, as well as the continuing plight of those left in a lurch, is discussed in a recent Reuters article titled “New Medicare coverage of long-term care off to a rocky start.” As pointed out there, you or a loved one may be eligible for benefits, but may need to fight to receive the benefits.
As with estate planning for humans, creating a pet trust is designed to give owners peace of mind. To ensure that pets will be cared for in accordance with an owner’s wishes, owners should be sure to definitively detail their pet’s standard of living and nutritional and health care.
Although pets are a beloved part of one's family, in the eyes of the law they are merely viewed as another form of property. This can make planning for the care of your pet difficult after you’re gone. While you can’t leave an inheritance to a pet, when including a “pet trust” as part of your estate plan you can provide for their care when you’re not there to provide it yourself.
“Pet trusts” have a decidedly less serious ring about them than a “Grantor Retained Annuity Trust.” Legal jargon aside, pet trusts can be plenty useful little devices for a common problem, especially amongst elderly pet lovers. In fact, a recent article in the Millionaire Corner considers a pet trust an estate planning basic. The article, titled “Estate Planning Basics: Creating a Pet Trust,” offers some practical pointers to consider.
…There are a few important questions many of us don’t think about. They’re the often overlooked issues of estate planning that could make all the difference for your relatives and heirs after you pass.
Estate planning encompasses so many areas of your life. For starters, you'll likely consider your values and your family. Then there is the nitty-gritty you might be overlooking: the financial, the legal, and the shared understandings. Make time for some real thinking, but also take some time to begin thinking about what you might be overlooking before planning in earnest.
The bits and pieces that are easiest to overlook are the kinds of things best uncovered by some friendly self-interrogation. To help get that conversation started, consider reading a recent article in US News & World Report titled “3 Important Estate Planning Questions.”
Ultimately, the decision about whether to leave your children money now or later depends entirely on your financial and family circumstances.
Deciding whether or not to leave an inheritance is only part of the equation. When should you give it – now or later?
Forbes recently tackled this difficult issue a short while ago in an article titled “Should I Gift Money To My Children Now Or Later?”
“Young people may be eager to marry for love, but older couples are more practical and worry about paying the bills,” says Pepper Schwartz, professor of sociology at the University of Washington.
These days, more and more Americans are meeting new loves or (finally) their true loves later in life. It has been said that marriage is a young persons’ game, but love isn’t. Even if you leave marriage to the young and idealistic, there is still some planning that really has to be in place.
The sociology of later-in-life marriage is fascinating, both in thinking about the recent jump in numbers and the more recent decrease. Either with or without tying the knot it is also a practical issue with legal ramifications, and for those later-in-life loves not destined for marriage there is some practical advice to be gleaned in a recent article on the subject in The New York Times titled “Welcoming Love at an Older Age, but Not Necessarily Marriage.”
Remember that any mistakes in your estate plan will live long after you. Follow these rules and you’ll end up with an estate plan that works well for you and your heirs.
Planning for the estate is really an ongoing activity. Accordingly, estate planning is not a “one-and-done” event, but rather it is a process to continue as things inevitably change. In this sense, you might say that proper planning, as an activity, is not guided by a checklist but by rules to follow. InvestingDaily offered some useful perspective on the rule-driven process of planning in a recent article titled “10 Basic Rules of Every Estate Plan.”
Here are the ten:
