What is the best way to prevent your children from wasting their inheritance?I am a firm believer that everybody — rich, poor, and those somewhere in-between — needs an estate plan. If you have never thought about an estate plan, perhaps that should be your New Year’s resolution.
While living, a parent can control their financial involvement with their children. But what happens following your death?
Many of our clients look for advice regarding the structure of their estate plans, which is certainly a worthy goal; however, many clients fail to recognize the importance of protecting their assets from liabilities, especially unforeseen creditors. This article will focus on some basic strategies to consider as a part of your overall estate planning.
We are seeing more clients come in for estate planning with concerns about their privacy, especially in probate proceedings.
What is the proper age to think about a living will or a power of attorney? What about a will or trust? No college student or parent of one wants to think about estate planning documents like these. But the reality is, there are a few basic documents that even the college freshman (or any adult — 18 years of age or older) could benefit from and that become even more important for young adults in their 20s or 30s.
It is a reality that, as we live longer, the need for long-term medical care continues to rise. A question I often get asked is, “How do we plan for the cost of long-term care, including nursing home costs?”
Starting at age 73, the IRS mandates IRA owners to take annual income withdrawals, known as Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Retirement-age individuals and couples may not want to take an RMD for a variety of reasons.
Probate is a court supervised proceeding where a person’s Last Will and Testament is enforced and administered at the time of death. Since it is a court supervised process, it can be quite expensive (up to 6% of the estate value) and time consuming (minimum of six months in Arkansas).
A guardianship is a court proceeding in which a person is declared incompetent by a court and a guardian is appointed by a court to have the care and custody of the person or of the estate, or both, of an incapacitated person.
There is a popular misperception among many seniors that in order to protect their assets from creditors, including the cost of nursing home care, they should consider gifting their assets to their children. There are three significant problems inherent with such an asset transfer strategy.
