by Christine | Mar 20, 2013 | Decanting, Inheritance, Irrevocable Trust, Trusts |
"It's like decanting a bottle of wine; you pour the wine into a new bottle to air it out," says Mark Haranzo, a partner at law firm Withers Bergman. In trust terms, you pour the assets of an old trust into a brand-new trust that essentially allows a...
by Christine | Mar 19, 2013 | Estate Planning, Marriage |
…More than 40% of women and more than half of men over 50 who get divorced end up remarrying, according to Census Bureau data. For folks like these, all sorts of financial considerations can complicate the question of whether and how to go about remarrying. Although...
by Christine | Mar 18, 2013 | Advanced Health Care Directive, Elder Care, Elder Law, Estate Planning, Nursing Home |
This uncomfortable, ethically questionable, confusing scene over Ms. Bayliss’ end of life did not have to happen the way it did. If you don’t want to be in that kind of situation, you need to be responsible for deciding what you want and communicating it to...
by Christine | Mar 15, 2013 | Estate Planning, Same Sex Estate Planning |
… Financial and estate planning is especially important for LGBT parents who adopt …. Having or adopting a child changes everything. Those words really hit home when same-sex couples seek adoption in a mix of state and federal laws. With state laws varied on the...
by Christine | Mar 14, 2013 | Blended Families, Estate Planning |
With more than 50 percent of first marriages failing and 75 percent of the partners remarrying, “blended” families — which include children from earlier unions — have become the norm. When you have a mixture of children and parents of various marriages and...
by Christine | Mar 13, 2013 | Cost Basis, Estate Law, Estate Planning, Inheritance, Stock |
I just inherited some stock from my uncle, and I know that he bought the stock for more than the present cost. Should I find the original cost, or do I use the cost as of the date I inherited the stock? If you ask any accountant or business owner, calculating the cost...
by Christine | Mar 12, 2013 | Estate Planning, Inheritance |
The blessings of wealth can be yours, but they are not delivered on a silver platter. Counter intuitive as it may seem, you must work for them. But your hard work will yield ample rewards. As there seems to be two sides to every story, there tends to be two views on...
by Christine | Mar 8, 2013 | Corporate Structure, Estate Planning, Small Business |
NO family wants to build a business only to see it disappear when family members get tired of running it. But let’s face it, what that business really represents is a large majority of the family’s wealth. Business succession plans take a great deal of thought, as...
by Christine | Mar 7, 2013 | Estate Planning, Insurance, Small Business |
When it comes to the growing use of sophisticated wealth transfer mechanisms like trusts and limited liability companies by individuals, the details include complicated insurance considerations that must be expeditiously addressed. If not, the devil—in this case a...
by Christine | Mar 6, 2013 | Estate Planning, Retirement Planning, Roth IRA |
Seniors who convert a regular IRA into a Roth account can reduce their estate taxes and eliminate the income tax their heirs would otherwise have to pay on withdrawals taken from an inherited regular IRA. Seniors who convert a regular IRA into a Roth account can...
