The reasons you, as a trustmaker, create a trust are certainly special and important to you, but your intent or purpose for creating a trust can also have significant legal ramifications. For this reason, it is often critical that a trustmaker express in writing their purpose for Continue reading
Author: Tom
Marital Disclaimers and the Clayton Election: Last-Minute Estate Tax Planning
Deferring, minimizing, or avoiding estate taxes altogether is often an important estate planning goal for married couples. However, uncertainty surrounding what the estate tax laws and the value of their accounts and property will be at the first spouse’s death can leave a couple Continue reading
Springing Financial Powers of Attorney
Estate planning is about more than preparing for the inevitable. A good estate plan should also consider the unexpected. Your plan may have detailed instructions for what happens when you are no longer around, but what if something goes wrong while you are alive?
If you can no longer Continue reading
Common Trusts: Parenting beyond the Grave
Parents strive to make their children feel equally valued as reflected in the fact that, when setting up an estate plan, parents typically divide their accounts and property equally among their children. But while parents strive to treat their children the same, they simultaneously Continue reading
QTIP Trust – Will My Spouse Get What They Need?
What is a QTIP trust?
A qualified terminable interest property (QTIP) trust is an estate planning tool that married couples can use to minimize uncertainty about the future and maximize certain tax advantages. Since no one can predict how much they will own at the time of their death, Continue reading
Pour-Over Will: Not Your Average Will
Wills and trusts are the two basic legal instruments that people use to pass accounts and property on to their loved ones at death. Although a revocable living trust is often used in place of a will, the two are not mutually exclusive. You can have both a will and a trust, and in Continue reading
Using Real Estate Deeds in Estate Planning
When using trusts in estate planning, a key element includes transferring the trustmaker’s real estate into the trust by recording a deed with the local recording authority. This step is crucial for ensuring that the trustee has the authority to manage and ultimately sell or transfer Continue reading
Slayer Statutes: Preventing Killers from Profiting from Their Crimes
Most states have laws that prevent someone who has intentionally killed another individual from being able to inherit any property from their victim.[1] In general, these laws are referred to as “slayer statutes” and are designed to prevent the patently unjust outcome of a killer Continue reading
Qualified Personal Residence Trust: What Is It and When Should You Consider One?
Americans have enjoyed historically high estate tax exemption rates for most of the last twenty years. Such high exemption amounts have kept many of them from needing to seek out more advanced estate planning strategies to avoid estate taxes, which have been as high as 60 percent Continue reading
Untangling Tangled Titles: Homeownership, Property Deeds, and Estate Planning
Do you really own the home you live in?
If you are currently living in a property that you inherited but the deed has not been transferred into your name, you may be surprised to learn that, under the law, you are technically not the owner. This legal situation is known as “tangled Continue reading