Estate planning is the act of preparing for the transfer of a person’s wealth and assets after his or her death. Assets, life insurance, pensions, real estate, cars, personal belongings, and debts are all part of one’s estate. Estate plans must be written, signed, and notarized by the person who owns the estate. Source: Estate […]
Merry Christmas from the Law Offices of Barry L. Gardiner.
Because life insurance proceeds generally are not taxed for U.S. Federal income tax purposes, a life insurance trust could be used to pay estate taxes. However, if the decedent holds any incidents of ownership like the ability to remove or change a beneficiary, the proceeds will be treated as part of his estate and will […]
Your estate plan can be set up to create directives that dictate what should happen to your estate, in regards to your personal care if you were to become legally incapacitated.
An estate plan can be designed to prevent your will becoming a matter of public record, should your family’s privacy be a concern.
One tax strategy to minimize, or avoid, federal estate and gift tax is to distribute your property incrementally, as gifts during your lifetime.
Estate planning involves the will, trusts, beneficiary designations, powers of appointment, property ownership (joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, tenancy in common, tenancy by the entirety), gift, and powers of attorney, specifically the durable financial power of attorney and the durable medical power of attorney. Source: Estate planning – Wikipedia
Gift taxes apply to transfer of property during a person’s lifetime. Estate taxes apply afterwards. There are many strategies to minimize the amount of taxes paid in either case, in accordance with all laws. Barry Gardiner is an expert in all of these avenues. Let him help you structure your plans to maintain all that […]
In a sense, everyone does have an estate plan; state law makes this point a certainty. It simply may not be the plan that you had in mind, or that your family would have preferred. Not having a will means that at your death the distribution of your assets will be dictated by the inheritance […]
However, assets left to other heirs may be. Barry Gardiner Law can help you structure your estate plan to account for this in the most favorable ways codified by the law.