RobinJerauld.com
Estate Planning
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Estate Tax Reduction Strategies
Start here. The type and amount of estate planning you need depends on several factors including your age, net worth and whether or not you are married and/or have children.
Checklist for Getting Your Financial Affairs in Order
Basic stuff, but take care of these items and you will be ahead of 99% of the population.
What you need to know about the most basic estate planning document. Pretty much everybody needs one of these.
Covers what probate is, what property passes through probate when you die, and when it makes sense to avoid probate.
If you have assets subject to probate and want to avoid the probate process, consider setting up a living trust.
How Durable Powers of Attorney for Finances Work
Use these simple tools to arrange for someone you trust to handle your finances in the event that someday you can't.
How Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorneys for Healthcare Work
Use these to spell out in advance what medical treatment you are open to and who you want making medical decisions for you in the event you become incapacitated.
Do It Yourself Estate Planning
I'm not out to push products, but this one is good. Pretty much everyone who needs a will, living trust, health care directive, financial power of attorney, etc. can benefit from this software.
Estate Tax Reduction Strategies
What it is and who is subject to it.
How to Use the Annual Gift Exclusion to Reduce Your Taxable Estate
You can give away up to $11,000 per year, per recipient without incurring gift tax. This may not sound like a lot, but structured properly and done consistently, it can take a huge chunk out of your taxable estate over time.
If you are married and have enough assets to be subject to the estate tax, you need to understand how these work, or at least make sure you estate planner understands. If this part gets screwed up it can end up costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate tax.
How Life Insurance Trusts Work
Life insurance proceeds are generally not subject to estate tax as long as you don't own the policy. Irrevocable life insurance trusts are a common vehicle used to move assets out of your estate.
The Basics of Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts
These trusts are useful when you want to remove rapidly appreciating assets from your estate. Be careful though, they only work if 1) the assets do in fact appreciate significantly and 2) you outlive the term of the annuity.
The Qualified Personal Residence Trust
Provides a way to effectively "freeze" the value of your residence for estate tax purposes so that future appreciation will not be subject to estate tax when you die.
The Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust
A creative way to minimize the estate tax bite when passing along the family business to the next generation. You need professional help on this one. It is complicated and there are inherent risks as this is still somewhat of a gray area.
A Practical Guide to Charitable Lead Trusts
Another tool for getting assets out of your estate while also benefiting your favorite charity. The trust pays income to a charity for a number of years after which the assets you contribute to the trust pass on to your heirs with significantly reduced gift and estate taxes.
When structured and operated correctly FLP's can be very effective in using lack of marketability and minority discounts to reduce the gift and estate tax costs of transferring assets, but there are some huge pitfalls to watch out for.
Asset Protection Scams to Watch Out For
Including pure trusts, the Texas joint stock company scam, bearer shares, asset protection consultants, "the father of asset planning", etc. Bottom line, if you are going to do complex asset protection planning, you need the services of a licensed attorney who specializes in asset protection.
The Problem With Foreign Asset Protection Trusts
They may keep your assets away from creditors, but they won't necessarily keep you from being thrown in jail for contempt of court.
Attempting to Hide Money Offshore
A great way to lose all your money. If you are going to hold money offshore, keep it with a well regulated bank or trust company such as Barclays or Credit Suisse.
Nice overview from CCH on identifying whether your assets are at risk, limiting liability in your business structure, and avoiding day-to-day liability risks. Be sure to click through on the bottom three links.
How to Protect Your Credit from Identity Theft
A growing number of states, including California, allow residents to place a freeze on their credit report prohibiting credit from being issued in their names (unless a PIN number is provided). With a credit freeze, a criminal can have your name, birth date, social security number and other info, but no credit will be issued. The cost to implement the freeze is $10 per credit bureau, but this is cheap insurance to protect against the heartbreak of someone stealing your identity.
Avoiding The "Free" Credit Report Scam
The credit bureaus set up confusing sister sites advertising "free credit reports" that require you to pay. For a while, AnnualCreditReport.com, the only place to get a free credit report online, didn’t even make the first page of search results on Google for visitors who typed in "free credit report". The credit bureaus intentionally sabotaged the site's rating by refusing to allow links to the site so that their imitation sister sites (e.g. freecreditreport.com) would rank higher in the search engines. Under pressure the bureaus finally caved, but the imitation sites still rank high. Don't fall for the FICO score report scam either: after you get your truly free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com, estimate your FICO score for free (and not just for "free") using myFico's FICO score estimator.
Using LLC's for Asset Protection
Why an LLC may be better than a corporation in protecting your business assets from personal creditors.
10 Things Your Estate Planner Won't Tell You
Watch out. Conflicts of interest are everywhere in this area and they can cost you big if you don't know how to spot the red flags.
10 Common Estate Planning Mistakes
Nice summary of traps to watch out for.