5 Easy Tips To Simplify Your Charitable Giving Will you be donating to charities this year? The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reminds us that you must itemize deductions on Schedule A of your tax return to claim a deduction for charitable gifts. The following five tips can also help ensure that your charitable gifts count. [...]
Estate Planning Strategies To Protect Your Spouse You found the love of your life, and as you have built your life together, you have likely weathered your fair share of storms and grown stronger because of them. Now that you are married, you are uniquely situated to provide meaningful support for your spouse after your [...]
How To Minimize The (Voluntary) Federal Estate Tax With Portability Most people may be surprised to learn that the federal estate tax is considered by some to be voluntary. Estate planning attorneys used to say, “You only pay if you do not plan.” The relatively recent introduction of portability provides yet another planning tool available [...]
Planning For The Unthinkable: Essential Tools For Parents Of Minor Children Approximately three-fourths of Americans do not have a basic will. Many of the same people also have children under the age of 18, which underscores a major misunderstanding about estate plans: They can accomplish much more than just handling financial assets (money, accounts, and [...]
3 Asset Protection Tips You Can Use Now A common misconception is that only wealthy individuals and people in high-risk professions, such as doctors or lawyers, need an asset protection plan. However, anyone can be sued. A car accident, foreclosure, unpaid medical bills, or an injured tenant can result in a monetary judgment that could [...]
Help Your Clients Clean Up Their Affairs with These Lists Clients Need An Inventory Of What They Own Before you can help your clients get to where they want to go on their wealth journey, you need to understand where they are right now. Doing so involves inventorying their assets (everything they own) and keeping [...]
Who Needs An Estate Plan? If you are reading this, you need an estate plan. Why? The short answer is that everyone age 18 and older needs an estate plan. It does not matter whether you are old or young, have built up considerable wealth or are just entering adulthood—you need a written plan to [...]
Beware of Trust Scams & How to Spot Them Trusts are widely used in estate planning to protect and transfer a person’s assets (money, accounts, property, etc.), sometimes in a tax-advantaged manner. Some trusts are highly complex, with multiple parties, intricate structures, specialized legal terms, and references to arcane tax law that can be difficult [...]
How To Give Real Property To a Loved One At Your Death Without Probate Court Involvement A home is often one of the most important assets that people own. Therefore, most people want to stay in their home until they die and then have a loved one receive it. One common way to pass a [...]
Be Careful Relying on Life Insurance to Provide for Loved Ones In an estate plan, life insurance can be used as a source of immediate liquidity for beneficiaries by offering a tax-free, lump-sum payment upon the insured’s death. About half of Americans have a life insurance policy. The primary reason people purchase life insurance is [...]
