Estate planning eases confusion, financial worries - WBAL TV

Estate Plan Funding for Spouses

Estate Plan Funding for Spouses - Investing - Forbes (JEH: This is indeed a common problem in estate planning. Most attorneys provide a memorandum outlining the steps that clients should generally take to fund their revocable living trusts -- to assign or transfer assets in some cases and designate their trusts as beneficiaries in other cases. However, the reality is that most clients never implement the funding. As a result, probate administration is typically required because the clients' "pour-over" wills must then facilitate the transfers of assets to the trusts. The other realistic issue here is that funding is not simple, even where clients empower the attorney and/or law firm to assist. More and more institutions refuse to accept these changes from anyone other than the clients, and also will not send any forms or other information to any address other than the clients' official address on record with the respective institutions. Due to these and other factors, trust funding necessarily requires involvement -- sometimes extensive involvement -- from the attorney/firm and the clients in order to implement fully. Finally, clients should either engage an attorney/firm to or directly conduct an "audit" of their assets from time to time to ensure that their objectives are still being achieved, including how assets are titled or designated.)

Weighing The Obama Budget's Impact On Estate Planning

Weighing The Obama Budget's Impact On Estate Planning - Private Wealth Online (JEH: Highlights planning opportunities and techniques targeted by the administration in the 2014 budget, including reversion to 2009 exemption levels, continuation of portability, more focused limitations on grantor trust planning (especially sale techniques disregarded for income tax purposes), and termination of generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption status of a trust on its 90th anniversary date)

Estate Planning Under the New Tax Law

Estate Planning Under the New Tax Law - WEALTH MATTERS - The New York Times

He Left a Fortune, to No One

He Left a Fortune, to No One - The New York Times (JEH: Yet another example of a seemingly "savvy" person -- this one a Holocaust survivor and financially successful business person worth an estimated $40 million -- who passed away without even a simple will)

New Private Letter Ruling Breathes Life into Nevada Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trusts | Estate Planning content from WealthManagement.com

New Private Letter Ruling Breathes Life into Nevada Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trusts | Estate Planning content from WealthManagement.com ("The PLR should make practitioners much more comfortable about using incomplete gift non-grantor trusts to avoid state income tax, evidently indicating that the IRS has dropped the issue it raised in IR 2007-127.")

Good And Bad News For Conservationists In New Tax Law - Forbes

Good And Bad News For Conservationists In New Tax Law - Forbes (JEH: This article highlights the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) extension of the more advantageous provisions applicable to conservation easements, namely a 100% maximum current year income tax deduction for farmers (50% for non-farmer donors), as opposed to the typical 30%, and a deduction carry-forward of 15 years, rather than the typical 5 years.)