Picking the right charity can be so complicated that it makes picking stocks look easy.
When you give to charity, do you ever wonder if your donation is really going where it's intended? Or if your gift is doing the work you intended?
If you are wrestling with these and similar questions, you may be interested in a recent article in The New York Times titled “Donating, and Making Sure the Money Is Put to Work.”
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 noted in a recent article appropriately titled “Protect your heirs from an IRA tax trap.”
IRAs are some of the most common high-value assets. That noted, because they are such unique accounts, there are some equally unique rules regarding inherited IRAs that are either amenable to diligent financial planning or a short-term high of a cash-out.
“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 necessity in the wake of a global financial recession and partly a shift in values or beliefs.
Forbes explored the difficult and interesting subject a short time ago in the article titled “What Kind Of Inheritance Do You Owe Your Kids?”
Many of us want to get going but don't know where to start. So, here are eight documents that can help you get your affairs in order. If that sounds like a lot of paperwork, don't worry: You probably won't need every one of them.
A properly planned and executed estate plan will have a few key elements and a number of important documents. So how many pieces is your plan all together? It depends upon your own estate. Regardless of your unique estate, it’s helpful to start with a basic list of documents.
There are a great number of little estate planning lists out there, and a dozen ways to list the documents you might need. That noted, MSN Money provided a helpful guide not too long ago with a helpful list of eight titled “Estate-Planning Documents You Need Right Now.”
[Donor-advised funds] promise a number of advantages over foundations, such as lower annual costs, more privacy and no required minimum payout each year. A big difference between the two is control.
Running a charitable foundation can be richly rewarding, yet exhausting. Now there is a popular alternative to a full foundation and a move to collapse back into what is known as a donor-advised fund.
If you or your family run a charitable foundation and are considering this alternative, The Wall Street Journal had a few points to consider in a recent article titled “Risks to Consider With Donor-Advised Funds.”
A spouse who inherits an IRA has a choice. The surviving spouse can move the account into an inherited IRA to keep the tax shelter. Or she can choose to roll the account into her own IRA.
There are some unique rules that go into effect when an IRA is bequeathed and inherited. If a spouse is inheriting the IRA, they have extra leeway that’s worth putting to good use.
The sorts of things an IRA inheriting spouse ought to think about don’t make the headlines quite as often. However, DailyFinance offered a helpful guide a short time ago in an article titled “When A Spouse Inherits An IRA.”
If you wish to ensure that your estate does not fall prey to predators, creditors or taxes, keep reading to be sure you're not committing the five cardinal sins of estate planning.
Just as it's important to know what to do, it's vital to know what NOT to do. Take estate planning for example. It takes a great deal of training to know what to do to best plan and structure an estate plan. That’s why you consult competent and experienced legal counsel. And knowing what NOT to do is part of that planning.
Maybe you’ve yet to start and maybe you’ve been working with an estate planning attorney for some time and piecing together some foolhardy designs. Either way there are some basic types of blunders that can befall anyone not wary enough to look for them.
What follows are issues to consider, and, in those rare cases where a transfer can make sense, how to do it the right way.
Are you thinking about handing over the family home to your loved ones early? Proceed with caution. Although the hand-off can be a blessing to some, there are consequences you should consider before passing on the house keys.
This challenge was the subject of recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled the “Dangers of Giving Your Home to Your Children.”
Generally the best way to value things is by looking at what similar things sell for. There is not a lot of buying and selling of facade easements. So what you do is value the property as it is and then value it as encumbered by the easement. If you can’t find sales of similar properties both with and without the easement, it all becomes rather hypothetical.
Proving the value of something is not easy. It's hard enough when you are trying to value tangible items, but what about those intangibles? A particular intangible, non-market benefit of great importance has become all the harder to prove: the easement valuation.
The developing trend against easement valuations was pointed out in a recent Forbes article titled “Easement Valuations Not So Easy Anymore.” If you have any possible interest in leaving an easement then it’s a problem well worth your planning attention.
Reverse mortgages, which allow homeowners 62 and older to borrow money against the value of their homes that need not be paid back until they move out or die, have long posed pitfalls for older borrowers.
Although a reverse mortgage has some advantages, such as offering a means of cash to make ends meet, the financial community has been quick to point out that there are also some serious pitfalls to these mortgages.
The biggest drawback to bear in mind is that your heirs and loved ones may bear the brunt of the burden when it comes to those drawbacks. It is important to know how reverse mortgages work before you sign up for them. While you are at it, make you’re your heirs and other inheritors know what to expect.
