Estate Planning

Saying you need an estate plan is like saying you need to eat your vegetables. You know it’s good for you but there are other things you’d rather do. A survey by Caring.com shows that in 2021, 25% of Americans ages 18-34 had some type of estate planning document, 22.5% ages 35-54 had a will or trust, and only 44% [...]

Someone trusts you so much that they name you to settle their estate after they die. You’re honored they have that much confidence in you, but you don’t think much about what’s involved in settling an estate. Among the long list of items you have to deal with is settling the deceased’s tax bill. You may have to file just [...]

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 became law, estate tax exemptions got a substantial boost. The amount each individual could pass on free of federal estate taxes jumped from $5,490,000 in 2017 to $11,180,000 in 2018.  That amount has increased each year since then based on the Consumer Price Index. In 2022, the exemption rises from $11.7 [...]

You just got the final draft of your estate plan. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time—how you want your estate distributed, who you want to take care of, who you want to benefit. As you scan the document, it includes your exact wishes for disposition of all the major assets; stocks and bonds, property, business ownership. But [...]

We’ve been focused on Covid for so long that a lot of things have taken a back seat. We’re still regrouping, trying to find the new normal. Estate planning is one of the things that’s easy to forget in this new normal. Why not? You did the estate planning, you listed your wishes, and you put the document in a [...]

It’s one of the most obscure taxes in the IRS code, but it can be one of the most devastating at a time when you can least afford it. It’s called the Widow’s Penalty Tax—a stealth tax you never see coming—that can cause a widow or widower to struggle financially. When one spouse dies, the surviving spouse is now responsible [...]