Category: Estate Planning

If you had just bought a new home and packed up all of your belongings to move, you wouldn’t just leave all of your furniture on the front lawn when you got to your new home, would you? Creating a trust and not funding, or moving, your assets into the trust is very much like that.

When looking into Estate Planning, a common misconception is that creating your trust/ signing your carefully planned trust documents is all that needs to be done. Whether you have a trust (revocable or irrevocable) or a will, it is crucial that you align yourassets with your trust.

Asset alignment, or “funding,” can refer to renaming your non-retirement assets (bank accounts, investments, stocks, etc.) under your trusts name, as well as designating your trust as a beneficiary for your retirement accounts and/or insurance policies.One of the main reasons for forming a trust is to avoid probate—a public, time-consuming and (for some states) costly process. Forming the trust is not enough to avoid probate; only the assets that are owned by your trust are protected.

So what goes where? The Asset Integration Worksheet we provide gives specific recommendations on what to do with each of your individual assets. What happens if I pass away before funding my assets? Thanks to the Pour-Over Wills we prepare, any assets that were not moved to your trust by the time you pass will “pour” into your trust, maintaining your privacy; however, they will likely need to go through probate.It is important that your assets align with your plan.

If you are interested in forming a trust to ultimately fund your assets into, or you are simply not sure how to start (or finish) your process, please give us a call 732-521-9455; we exist to help you!

You might be able to include other assets outside traditional ones in your estate plan, including frequent flyer miles. Certain U.S. airlines will allow you to leave your accumulated miles in your will.

You will need to contact the airline’s frequent flyer department directly to see whether or not they allow this. If they do allow it, make sure to ask questions about whether or not any limitations are exposed.

If the options are limited as to who will be able to take over your unused miles, such as a spouse, then you need to know this in advance so that you can name this person outright in your estate.

Some airlines will allow you to leave your miles to any beneficiary, however. If you are able to leave your miles, you want to state this specifically inside your estate planning documents and write them clearly. Make sure that you state that you are leaving your frequent flyer miles with the specific airline to a specific beneficiary.

Your estate planning lawyer can help you to document your plan for all of your personal property including your airline miles if you are able to transfer them.

Many different types of pieces of property and other valuable items such as your sentimental photos in your social media accounts could be passed on to your beneficiaries if you have a plan to do so. A consultation with an estate planning lawyer is the first step to making sure that you have considered everything.   

Ancestor.com’s U.S. probate and wills collection provides vast details about what people in the past left behind to their loved ones.

Some of the most interesting items left behind by famous people in history include:

• A snuff box left by U.S. Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, to his grandson.
• An island given by railroad businessman, George Pullman, while awarding his twin sons only a few thousand dollars a year.
• A $1 gift made to a grandchild of Paul Revere wherein everyone else received $500.

If it makes you concerned that so many intimate details of other people’s estates are available online, then you might wonder how these came to be available for public consumption to begin with.

This is because the information about assets being passed down to future generations was detailed in wills and wills become a matter of public record. Even if the initial intent of establishing such a will was for these details to remain private, you need to consider using a trust as opposed to a will.

An experienced and knowledgeable estate planning attorney can help you use a trust to enable additional privacy for your estate planning. Trusts are essentially written instructions that only you and the person selected as trustee need to know about.

This document does not go through probate like a will does and is much more private. You can also help to manage assets passed on to your loved ones by using a trust, which is not as easy to accomplish in a will.       

If you’re like most individuals, you already know that estate planning is a good idea, but you might have put it off for one reason or another. There are five primary things that you can hope to accomplish in the estate planning process.

Leaving Behind Property

You might use a living trust, simple will or both if you do not have substantial wealth. You can also use other methods of passing on property such as beneficiary designations, transfer on death accounts or co-ownership. If you have a large estate, you may use ongoing trusts to pass on property.

Providing for Young Children

You will want to ensure that your young children will want to be cared for if you pass away before they become adults. You can name guardians in your will as well as managers to look after their inheritance.

Planning for Incapacity

One of the most important and overlooked aspects of estate planning is what would happen if you ever became unable to make financial and medical decisions for yourself. You can use a healthcare directive to name an individual who is able to make medical decisions on your behalf.

Avoiding Probate

One of the most common reasons to schedule a consultation with an experienced estate planning lawyer is avoiding probate. Probate is the court managed process for wrapping up an estate, but it can be expensive, long and complicated for heirs to sort out. A little planning makes probate fairly easy to avoid using joint tenancy, pay on death accounts and trusts.

Estate Tax

While many people will not owe federal estate tax, you may want to use your estate plan to reduce the taxes that could be owed after you pass away.

Make sure that you consult with an attorney who is thoroughly experienced in the process of establishing estate planning tools and strategies for your best interests.     

Probate is a very common legal procedure that many people think of as an expensive and complex process. For simplified estates, however, probate might be a basic formality. Probate is the court’s way of a judge having discretion over the legal permission for assets to be passed on.

If a person passes away with a will, then probate is necessary to implement the provisions of what’s inside that will. However, the probate process can also be triggered through state laws of inheritance if the individual passes away without a will and has property that must be distributed.

If the decedent owned accounts that fall outside the probate process, such as a retirement account, but the beneficiary has passed away prior to the owner of the account, probate law mandates that the account go through the court so that the funds can be passed to the individual who is legally entitled to receive them under state law.

Some people don’t want to go through the process of probating a will. If the decedent owned property that was not specifically organized to avoid probate, then there is no way for a beneficiary of an item to obtain legal ownership without the probate process. It is possible to avoid probate completely with careful planning carried out by an estate planning lawyer.

This can avoid certain taxes, reduce legal fees and ensure that the assets inside your estate are kept private. Schedule a consultation today with an experienced estate planning lawyer.   

When you think of the process of estate planning, there are two likely instruments that pop into your mind; a trust and a will. Wills are relatively easy to understand since these are the primary documents through which you could pass assets on to future generations.

The concept behind trusts, however, is somewhat more difficult. One of the most important questions you need to ask as you put together a trust is who will serve as the trustee. Your trust can serve a variety of purposes, and you can think of it as a way to control property.

The word trustee implies a certain amount of responsibility and it is certainly true that trustees have a fiduciary duty to their beneficiaries. This means that the trustee owes absolute loyalty to the beneficiaries, so it’s such that they cannot act in any way that they do not reasonably believe is in the best interests of the beneficiaries of the trust.

Decisions that are made in good faith that ultimately prove financially harmful, are typically not categorized as the fault of the trustee, although disputes can and do arise between beneficiaries and trustees over these issues.

Bad faith decisions, however, can cause legal actions and the trustee could even be held liable for lost funds. This makes it imperative to only select the right person to serve in the role of trustee over your assets. Scheduling a consultation with an estate planning lawyer can help you become more familiar with the different types of questions that you should ask when choosing a trustee.    

The probate process should run quickly and smoothly, but this is not always guaranteed and the leading reason why people choose to use estate planning strategies and tactics to avoid the probate process. Probate refers to the process of distributing an individual’s assets after he or she passes away through court supervision. 

One of the most important aspects that determines the process of probate is whether or not the individual has a last will and testament in place at the time of his or her death. Any assets that do not pass directly to the beneficiaries will go through the probate process.

Some of the assets that are exempted from probate include, life insurance policy, distributions and certain retirement benefits. Even if you believe that you have a relatively simple estate, it will still be in your best interests to avoid probate. This is because the probate process can swallow up resources and time that delay your loved ones’ ability to receive your assets but can also add further stress and can lengthen the amount of time that it takes to close out your estate by years or even months.

Taking care of your loved ones and ensuring that they receive your assets in a prompt manner in addition to receiving privacy are some of the leading reasons why people prefer to use estate planning tools such as trusts. The probate process may work well for small estates in certain instances, especially for those who died without a last will, but most other people will want to go through the process of ensuring that their assets are passed on quickly and effectively to their loved ones.      

Establishing someone as the executor of your will requires advanced planning and careful thought about whether or not this person is indeed comfortable to serve in this role.

This requires telling this individual that you intend to install him or her as executor and ensuring that they feel confidence in their ability to serve in this role successfully. Understanding the duties of an executor in a will can help you to select the appropriate person to serve in this role.

Being selected as an executor is an obligation, as well as an honor. Prior to accepting, it’s important to understand exactly what you’re getting into.

When serving as an executor, you will distribute the individual’s personal property after arranging for the payment of the estate expenses and debts. Some of the most common duties tasked to an executor include:

• Paying estate taxes and filing tax returns.
• Establishing an account for paying bills and estate debts.
• Filing the will for probate.
• Choosing the type of probate.
• Distributing assets.
• Filing an inventory with the court.

Depending on the complexity of the individual estate, this could be a very large responsibility. Generally, executors tend to come from the creator’s children, siblings, parents or spouses. Many executors who are close family members do not ask for additional compensation, but an executor can receive payment as part of serving in this role.      

Perhaps you are a loved one of adult elderly parents who may be in need of nursing home support and assistance or perhaps you are trying to help a friend who may need to go into a nursing home very suddenly.

Paying for nursing home costs unexpectedly can quickly destroy a lifetime of savings. Long-term care costs can eliminate everything that you’ve accumulated over the course of your life. This means that it is important to retain the services of an experienced Medicaid crisis planning lawyer.

Medicaid crisis planning involves helping a person in a nursing home to save some of the assets before these are eliminated. A combination of strategies can be used in Medicaid crisis planning that can protect tens of thousands of dollars. Some of the strategies include assistance with the application process, understanding state statutes on Medicaid, and compliance with federal Medicaid law.

Relevant factors in a Medicaid crisis planning situation include the age and health of the estate owner, individual family circumstances such as divorce, the type of assets currently inside the estate and the value of assets currently inside the estate. A knowledgeable elder law attorney should step in quickly because timing is critical in Medicaid crisis planning. The sooner that you are able to take action, the more money can be saved.

Even if you have already been engaged in the spending down process for some time, if you still have significant assets to protect but are looking to go into a nursing home very soon, you need the support of a lawyer who will help you with this planning process.

There’s a strong chance that you don’t have the knowledge, patience, interest or time to deal with complicated financial matters. This is one of the biggest reasons why people end up pushing these important financial and estate planning considerations off your plate and into the wings. But it can be a big mistake to ignore financial and estate planning opportunities altogether. If you need assistance, it’s important to remember that you can get help. 

There’s no harm in seeking the services of experienced financial planners and estate planners. Make sure that any individual that you’re contemplating bringing into your personal life is thoroughly vetted. This means that they should come with reviews from other people who’ve had the opportunity to work with them and that they are willing to sit down with you during an initial consultation during which time they shouldn’t be focused on trying to sell you anything.

This person should be committed to understanding your individual perspective and primary concerns so as to create a plan going forward with you. The initial meeting is an important one for your consultation because it gives you a perspective of how this person chooses to work with clients and is your chance to ask questions about your next steps.

Many people might have overlooked the long-term implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This 2017 act, however, has marked a real change from previous estate tax planning towards lifetime planning.

There are major opportunities to mitigate estate tax liabilities by gifting wealth and assets outright to beneficiaries or giving them to a trust for the benefit of future generations. This is due to the increase in exemption amounts or GST gift and federal estate taxes. 

These gifting opportunities present an annual chance to consult with an experienced estate planning lawyer about what is recommended in your case and how to use these strategies in what appears to be an ever-changing estate and tax planning environment. You deserve to have the input and advice provided by an attorney who remains competent and knowledgeable about all current issues in the estate planning realm.

The start of a new year is a great opportunity to reconnect with your estate planning lawyer and to discuss how changes in your estate planning can have positive impacts not just for you in the short term, but also for your loved ones and beneficiaries over the course of a long run. An estate planning lawyer is there to advise you as plans and goals change over the course of your life and to keep your estate plan updated and in line with those needs.     

Planning ahead for your future retirement and estate planning goals might lead you to question whose name is listed on the deeds to homes.

Sometimes it can be the right decision to put your home into your children’s names, but this can also create grounds for family conflict and problems if you have multiple children.

One major reason to think carefully about putting your home in your children’s name is the potential for you to need Medicaid in the future. You could face a five year look back if you have a need for Medicaid for any time in the near future.

When you attempt to get support through the Medicaid program, assets that you gave away to your loved ones during the preceding five years could still be classified as yours, making it difficult for you to qualify for Medicaid.

If your children wait to inherit the house, you will pass along possible financial issues for them, including a new cost basis valued at the time of your death. If they were to choose to sell the property shortly after that, they would have no taxable profit.

Other issues can emerge if you pass on the title to your home, since your property could become involved in their problems if there is a financial claim, divorce settlement, or lien placed on the property, since they would own a share of your home. A lawyer who specializes in estate planning can give you more specific advice about whether or not putting your home in your children’s names makes sense.     

A power of attorney document enables someone else to make decisions on your behalf when he or she is installed as the agent. If you sign a power of attorney, you are called the principal.

In many instances, an appropriately drafted durable power of attorney can avoid having to go through additional court procedures such as a conservatorship or guardianship and will instead empower the financial agents that you select while still of sound mind to make decisions for you when you are unable to do so. This is your primary role in establishing a power of attorney, but you must also think about whether or not you want this power of attorney to be only for specific actions or to occur after a specific event, like you becoming incapacitated.

The agent of your power of attorney is also referred to as the attorney in fact. Without an appropriately executed power of attorney, if you were to become mentally disabled and unable to make your own decisions, your loved ones would have to go through the additional court process and payment of obtaining a probate court-supervised conservatorship to have an individual handle your financial and property affairs.

While no one wants to think about the possibility of not being able to make their own decisions, it could be a big mistake to avoid planning for this altogether because your loved ones would be the ones who end up paying the price. Schedule a consultation with an experienced estate planning lawyer to discuss to find out how a power of attorney can help you.     

Two key individuals might be installed as part of the management of your estate plan either during life or after you pass away. These are known as your executor and your trustee. These are individuals who implement your plan after it has been articulated in estate planning documents. Both of these individuals often determine the overall success of your estate plan or the trust. 

Unfortunately, not enough people give careful consideration to these appointments. Even if you care for and made these appointments, the death of one of these individuals or changing circumstances for either person might call for an update to your estate planning.

Are those individuals originally appointed in your estate plan as an executor or trustee still comfortable, able and willing to perform these jobs as you wish for them to be carried out? Is another person a better choice because your estate plan has changed? Or has someone moved away, passed away or aged?

Determining who is the best choice as a trustee or an executor requires thinking about who should serve in these roles today. If you believe that it’s time to update your estate plan, only do so with the help and guidance of an experienced and knowledgeable estate planning lawyer. You could otherwise expose yourself to unnecessary mistakes and problems.

 

You need to have three clear phases to the business succession planning process to ensure that you have considered all aspects and are as prepared as possible to pass your business on to a future generation.

Phase One: Creating A Clear Vision

Setting up measurable goals within your succession plan and aligning them with company values are important. This can have critical implications for the success of your company now and going into the future. Make sure that you are preserving not just the financial health of the company, but also its reputation and principles. These determine the many different issues in your own life including estate and tax planning strategies, financial issues, retirement and transition concerns. Make sure that you use a strong team of advisors who is familiar with business succession planning to accomplish these goals. After all of the data about the current state of your business and where you’d like it to go have been assembled, you can begin to create a strategy.

Phase Two: Building Your Management Team

Tapping into the talent already existing within your business goes beyond simply thinking about whether you should pass on the business to a child.

Many businesses do no survive with family succession plans especially if you have not talked to your child about taking ownership of the business because he or she might not be interested in the manner that you expect. Building a senior team that helps you to manage all the critical areas of your business will empower this next level to take over the company by working in a supervisory rule first. Your business succession plan should have methods to guarantee that valued employees will stay on their position upon your death, disability or retirement. An employment agreement can clarify this.

Phase Three: Put Together Your Estate Plan

Any succession plan is not complete without an estate plan. One of the primary concerns might be how to treat all of your children equally in the succession process, particularly if you have non-business assets. Make sure that you talk through your choices and consider using tools such as a shareholder agreement or buy/sell agreement with any other business owners.

 

A conversation with an experienced estate planning lawyer will be much easier when you have your goals in mind before attending the meeting. Different people approach estate planning with their own individual goals and the more time you can take to reflect on these, the easier it will be to craft strategies and tactics in line with your unique concerns. 

Some of the most common reasons for creating an estate planning include:

• To ensure that the family business you have worked so hard to build remains operational, functional and successful after a death or a sudden departure.
• To protect wealth using tools like asset protection planning.
• To determine the path of distribution for assets after a death occurs.
• To ensure that pets are financially provided for if something were to unexpectedly happen to an owner.
• To ensure that minor children have a guardian established to take over responsibilities of parents if the parents pass away prior to the child growing up.
• To outline a plan that protects the government benefits of a child with special needs while also providing for his or her care.
• To provide for incapacity or sudden disability by outlining who is able to make decisions and manage the affairs of the incapacitated person.
• To outline goals and strategies for charitable giving.
• To reduce or avoid estate taxes for those with significant wealth.
• To enhance control over what happens when a person receives an inheritance, such as ensuring that the money is used for a specific person like going to college or is passed on in a manner that allows that person to be financially successful.

Schedule a consultation today with an experienced estate planning lawyer.

 

In a sit-down conversation with an estate planning lawyer, you will want to have a sense of confidence and comfort in this person who will help steer you through the estate planning process. 

An estate planning lawyer serves in numerous different roles and may have different practice areas to assist you with all of the various estate, elder law and long-term planning needs for yourself as well as your business. Some of the common services provided by an estate planning attorney include:

• Asset protection planning.
• Business succession planning.
• Estate planning assistance.
• Medicaid knowledge and application preparation.
• Elder law concerns.
• Drafting of critical documents like power of attorney or a last will.
• Explanation of strategies, such as trusts to protect assets inside your estate and pass them on to beneficiaries.

There are several questions you should ask an estate planning attorney during your initial conversation. You are not obligated to work with an estate planning lawyer until you have signed a contract with him or her. Make sure that you consider these questions and ask them during your interview.

• How long have you been practicing?
• What percentage of your practice is dedicated to estate planning and elder law concerns?
• How frequently do you communicate with your clients?
• Do you host any seminars, workshops, or other educational opportunities for me to learn more about estate planning?
• How do you prefer to communicate with your clients?
• Why did you choose to practice area of estate planning and elder law?
• Will I be working with you directly or another person on your team?

These are all important questions to consider because not all attorneys choose to operate their law firm in the same manner or have the same experience, knowledge and passion for estate planning or elder law. Since this individual will be so personally involved in the development of plans for your present as well as your future, these questions can help you narrow down who to work with as an estate planning lawyer.

 

Untangling all of the aspects of your estate can be daunting for you but it can be even worse for your loved ones. You may pass away without leaving your executor or your family members with an updated and complete list of where all your materials are and how they can be accessed. 

Think about all of the assets and pieces of property you have accumulated over the course of a lifetime. If you have not clearly planned and articulated where these will go after you pass away, you’ll leave this mess for your loved ones to determine. Your bank account, mutual fund holdings, and brokerage accounts, as just a couple of examples, are associated with many different usernames and passwords and sometimes these require answers to security questions that your loved ones might not know.

Since not all of your holdings will be available electronically, you will need to plan for how an executor can access these materials. Some possessions are completely digital, like your social media accounts or the online place where you store all of your photos. However, if you don’t have passwords or a succession plan for these items to be passed on, you could be setting yourself up for failure and make things harder on your loved ones.

They might never be able to access these accounts at all since each of these individual companies have their own rules about how these assets can be passed to someone else, if at all.

You need the support of an experienced and knowledgeable estate planning lawyer to walk you through each aspect of the estate planning process and to counsel you about what to expect so that you can avoid these mistakes.

Starting a master list of all the different places where you have an account and adding to it as these jump into your mind over the course of a couple weeks can make it easier to have access to all of these. Many people don’t realize how many accounts and assets they have until they go through the process of creating a master list.

 

Unfortunately, plenty of people have not carried out the process of putting together an estate plan, assuming that they don’t need one or following some misconceptions about what truly happens to their belongings if they fail to plan. 

It is a big misconception to think that the state takes over your assets if you pass away without an estate plan. If you fail to leave a plan, the state follows the intestate policy of distributing your property to your traceable relatives. The only time that a state truly acquires a decedent’s property is when no traceable blood relative could be identified. This means that you have no cousins, siblings or anyone else.

If you fail to engage in estate planning, a far more likely prospect for what will happen to your belongings is that you will leave behind a mess for your loved ones and one that could be easily avoided by scheduling a consultation with an experienced estate planning lawyer.

An estate planning lawyer can assist you with pulling all of the necessary information together in your key documents and ensuring that you have considered all aspects of the estate planning process.

While the state might not necessarily take your belongings, you probably want to have a say in how your belongings are distributed and the best way to do this is by connecting directly with an estate planning lawyer who can assist you with using tools like trusts, wills and other strategies to protect your assets for the rest of your life and your loved ones in the future.

When your loved ones come home to help you deal with a significant medical crisis or even to help you wrap up your estate after you have passed away, you could put them in a very difficult situation by not having any access to these critical financial documents and other materials. 

Not knowing where your important information is located or not communicating this to your loved ones can make things much more difficult when they are already coping with grief or an emergency situation that requires their quick action. The tasks can seem insurmountable when trying to help a parent who has recently lost their spouse, if the spouse who passed away was the one primarily involved in financial management. Many people are now confronting the question of where to even begin with handling the growing piles of mail and paperwork and what to do if there is no filing system available. A master document can be helpful for directing people for where to find answers to many different questions. Some of the most common questions asked by loved ones who show up in an emergency include;

• Where is the last original will and testament located?
• Were any military discharge or veterans’’ benefits papers filed?
• Which bills in the pile are outstanding and require payment?
• Where was the family money invested?
• Was there a life insurance policy and which company maintained it?

The task of information preparedness might be approached differently by those adult children who have already had to step in and address these concerns on behalf of their loved ones. This can be an important learning opportunity that provides insight about what to do and what not to do. Going through this situation on your own might cause you to reflect about the best way to protect your own interests and to keep documents stored properly to make it easier for your loved ones if they need to step in quickly.