June 15, 2018December 13, 2025

Planned Giving

One of the ways that you can leave a good legacy behind, is to provide money to charity in your estate plan.

Your worth is likely more than the sum total of your assets. You have worth that does not have any direct monetary value. Your capacity to like and love your friends and family cannot be given a monetary value, for example. However, in estate planning, it can often seem like the only thing you will have left at the time you pass away, are assets that have monetary value and need to be given to other people.

You cannot give away your capacity to love after death. However, that does not mean your other value has to be left out of your estate plan completely. You can use your estate plan for planned charitable giving, as the Nashua Telegraph discusses in “Planning to give and leaving a lasting legacy.”

Planned giving is simply making provisions in your estate plan that a certain amount of money or a percentage of your estate’s assets should be given to charity. It is a popular option for people. It is popular not only with the wealthy, but also with people of more modest means who want to leave something behind for good causes.

There are several different ways you can make charitable donations a part of your estate. Some are as simple as a few lines written into a will and others are for more complicated, including setting up special trusts for the purpose. An estate planning attorney can help you choose the best way to do so.

Reference: Nashua Telegraph (May 20, 2018) “Planning to give and leaving a lasting legacy.”

Estate Planning, Wills, Trusts

May 3, 2018December 4, 2023

Joint Tenancy Is a Bad Idea

Adding a child as the joint tenant of your home to avoid probate is always a very bad idea.

Some bad ideas in estate planning never seem to go away. No matter how many times estate planning attorneys try to tell people that the ideas are bad, people continue to make the same mistakes.

One common mistake is when people try to do their own estate planning to get around probate. For example, a widow may add an adult child as a joint tenant on the deed to her home. While it is true that if all goes according to plan, the child will inherit the house after his mother passes away without the need for probate. This approach can be a bad idea.

Why? Normally, the trouble comes because the child has a creditor who can attach the home to pay off the child’s debts. However, there are other potential issues, as was recently discussed in the Napa Valley Register in “Can new wife inherit home?”

In this case, a married couple added their daughter to the deed as a joint tenant. The wife passed away, which made the father and daughter co-owners of the home. The father then remarried to a much younger woman.

The daughter refused to give up ownership and allow for a new deed allowing the new wife to inherit the home. When the father passes away, the daughter will inherit the home and be free to throw the new wife out if she wants.

Instead of looking for ways to avoid probate on your own, go to an estate planning attorney for assistance. The attorney can give you better ways to accomplish your goals and help you avoid these types of problems.

Reference: Napa Valley Register (April 5, 2018) “Can new wife inherit home?”

May 2, 2018

Tell Someone about Your Advanced Medical Directives

If you have a health care power of attorney and living will, you should make sure that someone you trust knows where to find them.

It is very easy to get advanced medical directives today. You can often get living wills and health care powers of attorney as part of the process of admission to a hospital. If you tell a doctor about your wishes, it is often good enough for the doctor to make a note of them in his or her notes. However, getting those documents at a hospital or by telling a doctor can be a problem.

The system of medical records used in the U.S. does not make it easy for doctors to know that you have expressed your wishes ahead of time, especially when they actually need the information as The New York Times reports in "You've Detailed Your Last Wishes, but Doctors May Not See Them."

There is a potential way to mitigate the possibility that this problem will happen to you. Get your living will and your health care power of attorney ahead of time, by going to an estate planning attorney. These documents are routinely created as part of the estate planning process.

Once you have created the documents, you should store them in a secure place. However, do not stop there. Make sure that someone you trust knows where to find the documents. That person can then get them when needed, to the doctors providing care for you.

This is not a perfect plan that will work all of the time, but it is better than relying on the current system of medical records.

Reference: New York Times (March 27, 2018) "You've Detailed Your Last Wishes, but Doctors May Not See Them."

May 1, 2018

Digital Asset Availability Limitations

Gaining access to the digital accounts of deceased loved ones is slowly becoming easier. That means that people need to think about what type of access they want to grant as part of their estate planning.

Even just a few years ago, it was almost impossible to gain access to the digital accounts of the deceased. Even when ordered to allow access by judges, tech companies would point to their terms of service and deny that access. This created many problems for families and estate administrators who needed access to those accounts for a variety of reasons. In Maryland, the legislature passed a law which became effective on October 1, 2016. The law allows Maryland residents to name a fiduciary, during incapacity and upon death, to access the resident's online accounts. DC has not yet enacted such legislation. For details on how to manage your digital assets, see an estate attorney.

In response to this problem, state legislators have slowly been passing new laws to gain access to digital accounts. As a result, some tech companies are beginning to change their policies to account for this. However, when it comes to your estate planning, do you want someone to have access to your digital accounts after you pass away? If yes, for how long should they have that access?

This subject was recently considered by the Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog in "Digital Assets Estate Planning — Alternatives to Perpetual Access."

The problem? The longer a digital account remains open without someone monitoring it, the more likely it is to be hacked by someone who can use the information in it for criminal, fraudulent or other nefarious purposes. Cases of this happening are becoming much more frequent. It sometimes means that estate administrators must deal with all of the problems associated with identity theft in addition to their more traditional duties.

Given these potential abuses, you might want to direct in your estate planning that your accounts be closed completely, after the period of time necessary to wrap up your affairs.

Reference: Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (April 6, 2018) "Digital Assets Estate Planning — Alternatives to Perpetual Access."

January 11, 2018November 26, 2024

You Might Need More Than One Will

People who have substantial assets in more than one nation, might need more than one will to have an effective estate plan.

Ordinarily people only have one will. They cannot have more than one. If they create a second will, then the first will is no longer valid.

This principle is central to estate law.

The last will a person drew up and executed, is the only will that should be used in the absence of extraordinary circumstances to settle an estate.

However, it is not always technically true.

There are people who might need more than one will. If you have assets in more than one country and are a citizen of both countries, then you might need a valid will in each country, as the Financial Review explains in “Double trouble for dual nationals.”

The problem is that some countries have strict laws about who can inherit certain property. There are laws about how much of an estate must be given to a spouse and to children.

Most countries do not allow deviation from these laws, even for people who do not live there full time and who have a valid will in another nation.

Even if your will is valid in the U.S., it is possible that another country where you hold assets could invalidate it for the property you hold in that country.

If your estate might be subject to the laws of more than one nation, make sure that your estate plan is valid in all the nations where you own property. If that does not seem possible, then have separate estate plans for the property in each nation. You may want to see an estate planning attorney in Bethesda, MD.

Reference: Financial Review (Sep. 20, 2017) “Double trouble for dual nationals.”

January 9, 2018

Tax Reform and People with Disabilities

Republican tax plans have some people with disabilities worried. For parents and grandparents of those people with disabilities, it suggests that a special needs trust is more important than ever.

The ramifications of the new Republican tax reform for individual Americans are still being assessed.

Some people will pay lower taxes, but a few will likely see their taxes increase. One group concerned about the new law was people with disabilities.

Not only will those with disabilities enjoy the standard deduction doubling under the Republican plan, but their taxes might decrease even further due to another provision. The plan includes a provision to lower the itemized deduction threshold for health care expenses in tax years 2017 and 2018. The new tax law lowers the deductibility threshold from 10% to 7.5% of adjusted gross income.

Not until 2019 will the threshold increase return back to 10% where it was pegged in 2016.

Accordingly, the fears expressed by The Hill in "Restructured tax code would unduly burden people with disabilities" did not come to pass.

There is something parents and grandparents of the disabled, as well as the disabled themselves, can do and that is create a special needs trust. These trusts do not ease anyone's tax burden but do allow people with special needs to have more income to help cover any increased taxes.

If you would like to learn more about special needs trusts, then talk to an estate planning attorney Bethesda Maryland for the details about setting one up.

The process is complicated and needs to be done in a particular way in order to work but an experienced attorney can help you with that.

Reference: The Hill (Nov. 24, 2017) "Restructured tax code would unduly burden people with disabilitie

September 1, 2017December 26, 2025

Trusts Are Cheaper Than Wills

If you are looking to save money on your estate plan, then you might think that you should get a will since they are cheaper to get than a trust. However, trusts are actually cheaper overall.

Estate planning can be expensive for some people. Estate planning attorneys do not always come cheap and not everyone thinks they can afford to hire one.

In most cases, a will is less expensive to get than a trust. This is because trusts normally require more of the attorney’s time to draft. This leads many people to get wills to save time and money.

The problem with is that a will is more expensive overall than a trust, as the Times Herald-Record explained in “Trusts will cost you less at settlement time.”

When someone passes away, someone must then administer either the will or the trust to make sure that property is distributed as the deceased directed.

Using a will requires going to probate court and having an executor, who can charge for the service, go through the process of administering the estate.

On the other hand, using a trust means that a trustee, who can also charge for the service, is required to distribute everything.

The trustee normally does not have to go to court, which makes it a much faster process. The speed means that the trustee may charge much less overall.

In the end, the trustee may be a lot cheaper than any money that might have been saved by getting a will instead of a trust.

When getting an estate plan created, it is important to use the instruments that work best for your situation. Do not be afraid to get a trust because of the initial expense.

It just may be cheaper in the long run.

Reference: Times Herald-Record (August 2, 2017) “Trusts will cost you less at settlement time.”

August 29, 2017November 26, 2024

Update Your Estate Plan

If you do not continuously update your estate plan, then it will not be as effective as you want it to be.

After people get an estate plan, the last thing many of them want to do again, is to go back to the estate planning attorney and make changes.

It can be expensive to do so and it takes time away from other things. It also forces people to think again about their own deaths.

This leads people to think that if they have already gotten an estate plan, then at least they have something. They believe that they do not need to make regular changes, since they will always have time when they are older to change their plans to account for everything that has changed since they first got estate plans.

However, that is a bad idea as Market Watch reports in “There’s no time like the present to update your estate plan.”

The biggest issue is that you might not have as much time to update your estate plan as you think. Even the most cautious person with the healthiest habits in the world, can never know what might happen to him.

You do not have time to wait to update your estate plan to take changing circumstances into account. It is important to make changes to your estate plan, when those changes first become necessary.

If you do not continuously update your estate plan, then you risk leaving your family in a bad position when you pass away. They are the ones who will have to deal with anything that might have made sense once, but that no longer does.

Reference: Market Watch (August 7, 2017) “There’s no time like the present to update your estate plan.”

August 11, 2017

You Need a Power of Attorney

No matter who you are and what you do for a living, if you can read this, then you need a general durable power of attorney.
Think for a moment about everything you routinely do to make sure that all of your finances are in order. You pay many kinds of bills, including cable, phone, utilities, rent or mortgage and many more.
You probably pay these bills every month without much thought, other than a bit of grumbling.
You are used to it. You know how to pay them. You know if there is enough money in your accounts to cover the bills. You can also get that money out of the accounts and get it where it needs to go.
However, what if something were to suddenly happen to you?
You need to consider how difficult it would be for someone else to take care of all those bills, as WMUR 9 ABC points out in "Money Matters: Why you need a durable power of attorney."
You need to think about what would happen, if you have an accident and could not pay your bills for a few months or even longer.
What would it be like to get out of the hospital and come home to a big stack of unpaid bills? How many of your services would be cut off? Would you be in any shape to pay all of the stacked up bills to quickly get everything back in order?
There is a way to avoid that scenario.
You need to go to an estate planning attorney and get a general durable power of attorney. This will allow someone that you trust to pay your bills, if you are physically or mentally unable to do so.
Reference: WMUR 9 ABC (July 6, 2017) "Money Matters: Why you need a durable power of attorney."

Building Legacies that Last Estate Planning and Elder Law

Tag: estate planning attorney