How to Protect Your Family When You and Your Spouse Work in the Same Business
You and your spouse live together, you work together, and chances are you spend a lot of your free time together. Having a successful marriage and business takes a lot of hard work and dedication but can also be among the most rewarding things in life. To help keep you on the right track, here are a few tips.
Why Your Marital Agreement Should Be Shown to Your Estate Planner
Springing Financial Powers of Attorney
While every estate plan should feature a financial POA, a springing financial POA requires a little more nuance to overcome its limitations. Additionally, even when carefully written, a springing financial POA can pose problems that may not be easily resolved. That said, some people dislike the idea of making a financial POA effective immediately. They prefer to have a financial POA kick in only when it is absolutely necessary.
Yours, Mine, and Ours: How Including a Pour-Over Trust Can Simplify Your Planning
A number of married couples think about their accounts and property as “yours, mine, and ours,” especially if either or both spouses have gotten or will be getting remarried, married late in life, or have brought or will be bringing significant amounts of money and property into the marriage. Deciding what should happen to all of these accounts and property at death can be a big undertaking. To help alleviate some of the stress that may come from making such decisions, we like to suggest a unique estate planning tool called the pour-over trust.
Assisted Reproductive Technology and the Real Impact on Estate Planning
ART can provide a solution for those who are struggling with infertility, interested in avoiding passing on genetic risks, or want to store genetic material for later use, as well as for same-sex couples who want to have children. Although it may be surprising, ART is an issue that could have a major impact on estate planning for families seeking to have children through its use.
What to Know about Nonfungible Tokens or NFT
Learn about NFTs. NFTs can generate new streams of revenue for creators and be a store of value for collectors. If you own NFTs or plan to invest in them, you should update your estate plan accordingly. Handing down an NFT is more complicated than passing on a physical item or other traditional asset. But with buzz building around NFTs, they could end up being among the most valuable items in your estate.
Statements of Intent or Purpose in Estate Planning Documents
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 creating the trust. There are essentially two different ways of documenting a trustmaker’s intent—each have slightly different purposes, and sometimes both are generally called a “statement of intent.”
Bankruptcy’s Effects on Estate Planning
Using Beneficiary or Transfer-on-Death Deeds
If you own real property, such as a home, in your sole name but you have not created a trust and transferred your property’s title to the trust, it is virtually guaranteed that your beneficiaries (or heirs) will have to deal with probate after your death. If the time and expense required to create a living trust does not make sense for your situation but you still want to avoid the probate process, a transfer-on-death (TOD) deed may be the solution.
529 Plans – What You Need to Know
There are many ways that you can begin saving for your children or grandchildren’s college expenses: 529 plans are among the most popular types of accounts used to set aside these funds. There are a variety of factors you should consider in determining whether a 529 plan is the best option for your family, including some that may impact your estate planning.
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 feeling that they need a crystal ball to make the right decisions. Using either a disclaimer or the so-called Clayton election as part of their estate plan can allow at least some hindsight and, consequently, peace of mind.
QTIP Trust – Will My Spouse Get What They Need?
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, which spouse will die first, whether the surviving spouse will remarry, or what the estate tax rate will be when they die, a QTIP trust can help deal with and minimize these uncertainties without the need for a crystal ball.