The Importance of the Step-Up Basis Rule Before Congress enacted legislation a few years ago dramatically increasing the estate exemption amount, the name of the game in estate planning was largely estate tax minimization or avoidance. Now, the current exemption amount is $5,490,000 per individual in 2017, and spouses have the ability to double that…
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Kids off to College? Key Legal Documents Needed. It is the time of year for our children to be going off to college. What happens if the college student gets in an accident or is really sick when for away? Who back home can find out what’s going on and make healthcare decisions? Keith Tokerud…
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Family Bank Trust Any person currently may make a tax-free gift of up to $14,000 each year to anyone he or she wishes. One potential beneficiary of an annual exclusion gift is the donor’s spouse. This is often overlooked because the law allows an individual to make unlimited lifetime gifts to a spouse under the…
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Should You Consider an IRA Trust for Your Estate Plan? The biggest advantage of IRAs and other tax-deferred retirement savings is the tax-deferred growth of your investment. The longer you can leave assets in the account to grow, the bigger the possible tax savings. This is true even if you have reached age 70 ½…
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Spendthrift Provisions in Trusts provision? It is language contained within a revocable or irrevocable trust that limits the beneficiary’s legal rights concerning the trust assets. This restriction protects the trust property, and thus the beneficiary’s interest in the trust property, in two ways. It prevents a beneficiary from assigning or transferring away his or her…
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8 Estate Planning Things to Do Before You Travel My colleague and friend, Jim McVittie, of Portland, Oregon, has posted a list of estate planning things we should before we travel. I wanted to share these with you so I have reproduced Jim’s post below. Before any trip, most of us create a “to-do list”…
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Estate Planning Checkup Mid-year is a good time to review your existing estate plan to ensure that it is up-to-date. There are several things that you should review or consider when going through this, many of which I have listed below. Look at any trust or existing will agreements. If you have a trust, have…
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New IRS Ruling Extends Deadline to Elect Portability on Behalf of Surviving Spouse The IRS recently issued Revenue Procedure 2017-34 which grants another round of relief for personal representatives who mistakenly forget to file an estate tax return that elects portability on behalf of the decedent’s surviving spouse. One of the major misconceptions with the…
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The American Health Care Act (AHCA) and its Potential Effect on Medicaid The last few months have involved a flurry of activity from both President Trump and Congress over the issue of health care. The House Republicans in Congress have been working on legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) also known…
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Standalone IRA Beneficiary Trusts for Inherited IRAs It is pretty safe to say that almost everyone has heard of an individual retirement account (IRA), but not many people know about an IRA beneficiary trust. Part of this may be that IRAs were not originally designed to be wealth transfer vehicles for anyone other than a…
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