There are so many things to think about when a loved one passes away. What to do with the prescription drugs (or other controlled substances) that are in your loved one’s medicine cabinet is not usually at the top of that list. Yet, to avoid running afoul of laws governing their disposal, it is important to understand the proper procedures for disposing of a deceased person’s controlled substances.
If you own real property, such as a home, in your sole name but you have not created a trust and transferred your property’s title to the trust, it is virtually guaranteed that your beneficiaries (or heirs) will have to deal with probate after your death. If the time and expense required to create a living trust does not make sense for your situation but you still want to avoid the probate process, a transfer-on-death (TOD) deed may be the solution. A TOD deed (also known as a beneficiary deed) does what it sounds like it does—it transfers your real property to your selected beneficiaries upon your death, similar to a payable-on-death designation for a bank account or a transfer-on-death registration for an investment account.
It is better to give than to receive. But if you give a gift above a certain amount, you might end up owing money to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). ...
A number of married couples think about their accounts and property as “yours, mine, and ours,” especially if either or both spouses have gotten or will be getting remarried, married ...
What Is Self-Dealing in Trust Administration? A trustee usually has quite a bit of discretion in their management of a trust’s accounts, money, and property (known as assets). At the ...
For grandparents who want to leave a legacy to their grandchildren, the gift of a 529 college savings plan is an option. Not only can opening a 529 plan account ...
Bankruptcy can be incredibly stressful for anyone to go through. Once your matter has been closed, you may wonder what the next steps are. To ensure that you protect your remaining accounts and property as well as yourself and your loved ones, we encourage you to consider an estate plan as your roadmap into the future.
Parents strive to make their children feel equally valued as reflected in the fact that, when setting up an estate plan, parents typically divide their accounts and property equally among their children. But while parents strive to treat their children the same, they simultaneously acknowledge that children have different needs at different times. And these needs do not always correlate with perfectly equal dollar amounts. Should something happen to you and your accounts and property pass to your minor children in equal shares, there may not be enough money for each individual child’s expenses. Almost certainly, one child will require more funds than another. Instead of simply dividing your accounts and property equally among your children, you can place accounts and property in what is known as a pot trust or common trust with instructions for your trustee on how to spend the money and property on behalf of all the beneficiaries.
The reasons you, as a trustmaker, create a trust are certainly special and important to you, but your intent or purpose for creating a trust can also have significant legal ramifications. For this reason, it is often critical that a trustmaker express in writing their purpose for creating the trust. There are essentially two different ways of documenting a trustmaker’s intent—each have slightly different purposes, and sometimes both are generally called a “statement of intent.” Let us examine each of them.
A qualified terminable interest property (QTIP) trust is an estate planning tool that married couples can use to minimize uncertainty about the future and maximize certain tax advantages. Since no one can predict how much they will own at the time of their death, which spouse will die first, whether the surviving spouse will remarry, or what the estate tax rate will be when they die, a QTIP trust can help deal with and minimize these uncertainties without the need for a crystal ball.