- Who Should Be the Beneficiary of Your IRA?
You have a number of choices when it comes to selecting a beneficiary (or beneficiaries) for your IRA. Some are appropriate. Some are mistakes and can lead to delays and expenses in getting the funds to your desired recipients. Some may even exclude some of your desired beneficiaries. In addition, some elections are for estate planning purposes. Let's take a look at your options.
- IRA Distribution Rules at Death: Critical Knowledge for Good Decisions
The distribution rules required at the death of an IRA owner depend on several things:
- Roth IRA Distributions at Death: Pitfalls to Avoid
One of the most attractive features of a Roth IRA is the ability to control the timing of the eventual required distributions. However, this ability mandates the withdrawals to be made within a prescribed set of rules.
- Three Ways to Buy Long Term Care Without Paying Premiums Out of Your Pocket
Stop 100 people over 65 on the street and ask them if they will ever need to go to a nursing home and 99 will say, “No!” Folks tend to equate long term care insurance with nursing homes, but there are other aspects of long term care. Home care, assisted living, adult day care and hospice care are all forms of long term care which cost money where the person never sees the inside of a nursing home.
- How to Increase Your Income, Lower Your Taxes and Help Your Favorite Charity
Given the fact that most seniors are interested in a secure income, reducing risk and lowering taxes, here is a planning technique to consider if you are trying to increase your income.
- Asset Protection In Relation To Medicaid And Bankruptcy
Asset Protection And Medicaid
- Baby Boomers: Will They Be Able to Afford Their Parents?
Do you worry about whether your aging parents have their "affairs in order?" You should. After all, you’re the one who will have to pay unnecessary taxes and endure time-consuming court procedures if your parents don’t have an effective estate plan. Without some forethought on their part and your part, you could be facing a lot of wasted time and money in addition to a lot of frustration. All of the waste and frustration can easily be avoided.
- Top Asset Protection Strategies
Are you someone who has made a considerable amount of fortune in recent times?
- The Importance of Making a Will
Please note: this article applies to residents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and is provided for general information only. It does not constitute financial advice.
- Asset Protection - Why Do You Need It?
By the time people reach their forties, many have a growing family and responsibilities. Many already own a house and quite a few other valuable assets. This is the phase of life where they focus on their career in order to provide for their families, and to pay for the bills and mortgages etc. They also focus more on investments for better financial security for their family and a comfortable nest egg.
- Estate Planning: Make Sure Your Wishes are Honored
A medical power of attorney and living will are crucial estate planning steps, and like long term care insurance, must be set in place early in life for optimal protection.
- Appointing A Financially Literate Executor
During the estate administration, the personal representative (the Executor where there is a will and the Administrator, where there is none) has full control of the assets of a deceased's estate. Only the executor has the power and authority to sign the checks in respect of the deceased's bank accounts, sell the assets and receive the sale proceeds.
- Insurance Mistakes You Can Avoid That Can Cost You Cash
Whatever type of insurance you are taking out, there are some common mistakes that people make which cost them money and may leave them without cover when they most need it. If you are looking at insurance then you should avoid these common mistakes if you want to be fully covered and save yourself money.
- Estate Planning - Gender Issues Meet Social Security
If Social Security benefits play a significant role in your retirement plan, it may be time to rethink your strategy. The big news on the Social Security front over the past few years has been the fact that, due to an overabundance of encroachments on the system, it will soon be paying out more than it takes in. Opponents argue that the current Administration’s move toward personal retirement accounts will further erode what the American Association of University Women has referred to as “one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in our nation’s history.”
- Estate Planning - Real Property Disbursement Problems
The problem created by evenly splitting an interest in real property between your heirs.
- Estate Planning - Protecting Your Assets from the State
It isn’t just the US Government waiting out there to grab a chunk of your hard earned estate when you become incapacitated or die. Strangely enough, state coffers are frequently enlarged through the mechanism of Medicaid. When someone requires long-term care in a nursing home, unless he or she has a private long-term care insurance policy, their whole estate may belong to the state when they pass on.
- IRA Beneficiary Planning Strategies
Here’s an estate-planning technique that allows you to lower the tax sting to your heirs, and that reduces your retirement income in case you don’t think you will need all of your Individual Retirement Account funds in retirement. It’s called a “stretch IRA,” or “Multi-generational IRA,” a complex investment tools that allow you to extend the tax-deferred status of your IRA long after your death.
- Estate Planning – Protecting your Will’s Integrity
In the not overly distant past, the writings of the testator were the only evidence of his or her intentions and mental capacity. Undue influence was harder to defend against when the only evidence was the testator’s writings and the recollection of those around them. Imagine the scene, the packed court room (perhaps I have a flair for the dramatic), the testimony as to the deceased’s mental health and the influence exercised over them by their final caretakers and close family members made the testator’s mental health and the influence of others over them a matter of the testimony of the living and those often involved in contesting or defending the will.
- Estate Planning - No Contest Clause in your Will
There is value in the story of an older client who had seen a very interesting clause employed in a will. There was a great deal of money at stake and the many family members had little reason to love each other, because they had never met and never knew of each other’s existence. It was expected that the will would be heavily contested on several different fronts in every conceivable way. The testator realized that a truly lengthy contest would result with the bulk of his estate in the hands of people he really didn’t care for in the least: Lawyers.
- Estate Planning - Capacity Challenges
Wills and trusts have an interesting history in a culture as heavily influenced by British common law as our own. The bequests of wills have been the pole star around which a great deal of mystery fiction has been written where furtive and anxious relatives wait around a long imposing table to hear what is to become of the family fortune and thus; what is to become of them. As usual, fiction and the media give one side of what something has been or is, while the other side of the tale exists behind the scenes or on an obscure back page of a newspaper.
- Estate Planning -Intent to Disinherit or Oversight?
Sometimes family and estate planning begins before the family is complete, particularly in an age where people (generally) are waiting until later to have children. In that case there could be grandchildren named in a will and others not, who are all in the same family. The reason may simply be that the children who were left out were not born when the will was made and it is too late to remake it. Fortunately, most states now have laws that are designed to remedy this situation.
- Estate Planning – Considering a Second Marriage Late in Life
As the life expectancy of people in the United States increases, the reality of second and third marriages becomes more likely even for those who tend to marry for a long time if not until the death of their first spouse. Widows and widowers are increasingly likely to meet and decide that a second marriage is an excellent way to avoid spending their autumn years alone and that love is not the exclusive province of the young. It is often a surprise to adult children to meet the boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife of their elderly parents.
- Estate Planning - Protecting Your Furred Friend
Copyright 2006 Ronald Hudkins
- Estate Planning - Undue Influence Considerations
Often during the final years of a dear friend’s or relative’s life some person or persons will take over the task of caring for their sick and elderly friend or relative to a greater degree than the other people in their lives. This is sometimes due to sheer geography where the aged or sick person lives nearer to one set of relatives than to another. In addition, some relatives or friends may be better suited to dealing with the realities of sickness, age and dying than are others. There are some people who do not have the temperament to be care givers for those they love dearly, because they cannot bear to see a parent decay and succumb to age and death, particularly if the process is prolonged.
- Estate Planning - Rules and Trustees
If you are wisely attempting to put some assets into a trust (inter vivos) in your lifetime, then you have been paying attention to the important differences between wills and trusts. A trust created during your life will be far more secure with respect to its ability to withstand challenges to how your assets are to be distributed during estate planning than a will. Making a trust is a brave thing to do, because it telegraphs, to a certain extent, what you are going to do with your assets while you are still alive. This is what insulates it from attacks on your capacity, because it is unlikely, for example that, one of your relations is going to say you are insane or feeble and unduly influenced by another of your relatives to your face and this makes the trust a far surer bet than a will, in some cases.
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