529 College Savings Plan

Divorcing? Re-Visit the Details of Your Houston Estate Plan

Published on: April 10, 2015 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Once you're divorced you should immediately create a new estate plan — a will or revocable living trust, a healthcare power of attorney, and a living will ("pull the plug") designee. Read on for more estate planning must-do’s regarding divorce.

A recent article in the The Huffington Post, titled “Divorce and Money,”says that you should always listen to your attorney about the applicable laws in your state regarding divorce and your estate. In addition, the article says that you should also look at the following issues.

The division of property in a divorce is typically not taxable to either party. However, if instead of dividing marital property, one spouse agrees to monthly maintenance (alimony), this will be taxed as ordinary income. And it’s deductible to the paying spouse. The original article also notes that the spouse receiving the maintenance checks must make a quarterly estimated federal and state tax payment, so you need to plan accordingly.

529 College Savings Plans Key for Houston Families

Published on: March 26, 2015 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Given the rising cost of most college tuitions, the complexity of college loan agreements and the difficulty for most middle-income families in simply maintaining their budget for ordinary daily household expenses, planning for your children’s college education is an important topic to consider at the earliest possible stages of a child's development. Fortunately, an established method of helping to accomplish this goal is the 529 college savings plan.

The 529 college savings plan is a way to save and set aside money specifically for the purpose of funding higher education. It’s a tax advantaged investment program that’s designed to help you fund future qualified education expenses. The benefits are that it offers flexibility, control, and tax advantages—plus it’s available to anyone who wants to make contributions for qualifying higher-education expenses without income limits (like Grandma or a favorite uncle!). The Legal Intelligencer’s recent article titled “529 College Savings Plans: How They Work” explains more, so let’s break it down.

The 529 owner keeps control of the assets and is allowed to choose how much and when money can be withdrawn. The owner can also change the beneficiary to a different family member related to the original beneficiary (see your estate planning attorney for the rules on this) whenever they like, and the investment allocation can be adjusted once a year.

529 Colleges Savings Plan – “Super-Fund” It!

Published on: January 10, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

You can stuff a lot of money into a 529 college savings plan now and then do the same thing at the beginning of 2014 – a strategy that advisers say they are seeing many wealthy clients adopt this year.

Funding a 529 College Savings Plan before year-end is a great gifting strategy your college-bound grandkids. They will surely appreciate your gesture! And if you wanted to take that gift one step further, did you know you can actually super-fund it?

As though just funding a 529 were not good enough, Reuters provided the skinny on super-funding recently in an article titled “Should you super-fund your 529 college savings plan?”