Archive for the
‘Estate Planning’ Category
Tax Rules When Selling Your Home – How the gains from the sale of a primary residence are taxed has changed in recent years. If you have recently sold your home, or are considering doing so, you may want to be aware of these new rules. HOME SALE If you owned and lived in your home […]
Determining the value of an estate is a fundamental first step in estate management and a critical requirement for settling a decedent’s estate.¹ HOW TO ASSESS THE VALUE OF AN ESTATE Select the date of calculation. Because values move up and down, you need to set a specific date for a valuation. For a living […]
Everybody should have a power of attorney—that is, a legal document that gives a designated individual the right to act on their behalf when making financial decisions. The power of attorney is most often used by adult children to make decisions on behalf of aging parents when they are no longer capable of making sound […]
Several years ago, Jack’s father died. Jack grieved not only for his father’s passing, but also for his widowed mother who had been married to Jack’s father for 35 years. In due course, Jack’s mother remarried. However, when she eventually passed away, Jack suffered a double loss: Jack not only lost his mother, but also […]
Vacation home sales jumped 57% to an estimated 1.13 million for the 12-month period ended December 31, 2014, exceeding the recent peak level reached in 2006.¹ When it comes to insuring your second home, you may find that the coverage you need is quite different than what you have on your primary home. The Unique […]
In recent years, a new category of assets has appeared on the scene, which can be more complicated to pass on at someone’s death than stocks, bonds and cash. The list includes such valuable property as digital domain names, social media accounts, websites and blogs that you manage, and pretty much anything stored on the […]
Years ago, the way to most efficiently save on estate taxes was to set up credit shelter trusts that would pour assets from one spouse to another when death occurred, so that both spouses would get the maximum estate tax exemption. In those simpler days, people who didn’t have to pay estate taxes didn’t have […]
As more Americans shoulder the responsibility of funding their own retirement, many rely increasingly on their 401(k) retirement plans to provide the means to pursue their investment goals. That’s because 401(k) plans offer a variety of attractive features that make investing for the future easy and potentially profitable. What is a 401(k) plan? A 401(k) […]
Retirement Assets in the Event of a Divorce Federal law requires that participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans designate their spouse as their beneficiary unless the spouse waives this right in writing. Assuming that you and your spouse adhered to this practice, a document known as a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO), which is part of […]