In 1974, the Individual Retirement Account (IRA) was born, and since its inception more than 43 million Americans have created at least one IRA account for their retirement savings. Over the years the IRA has transformed greatly and has the potential to continue to evolve over the coming years. In…
The sales of firearms in the United States is rising, and for people who want to pass on their collection of guns to the next generation, estate planning has been particularly difficult. However, with the advent of the “gun trust” there is now a way to ensure that your collection…
Just like you would not attempt a do-it-yourself project around the house without the proper hardware tools, you should not go into retirement without the proper estate planning tools. This means that you need to have the right planning vehicles and strategies in place that will ensure that you are…
When a trust is created, most often the creator turns to a trusted friend, relative, or confidant to oversee it. This makes a lot of sense to most people because the purpose of a trust is often personal in nature, and the creator wants someone to run the trust that…
Blended families, where there are children and spouses that have been through multiple marriages, come with estate planning conflicts that unblended families do not typically deal with. Children from previous marriages cut from wills, barred from seeing a sick parent, from attending a funeral, or inheriting part of a family…
Many affluent families are increasingly building or buying legacy properties – multi-million dollar properties or compounds that are designed to be shared with family now and for generations to come. This trend comes with the rising interest in multi-generational living and vacationing as well as to be a place where…
For people who are estate planning and have one of their goals as providing for their grandchildren’s education, training, future home, or the like there are many assets that can be suited for that goal. However, there is one asset that does not often come to mind that can cover…
In order to keep the wealthy and elderly citizens residing in the state, New York recently raised its state estate tax exemption to five million dollars, up from the mere one million dollar limit of previous years. Matching the federal exemption level, many people in the state were thrilled that…
The United Kingdom recently announced that it had digitized its archives of over 41 million wills registered in England and Wales, dating back to 1858, that will allow people to explore the wills of some of the most influential figures of the last century and a half in addition to…
In a recent opinion released by the Seventh Circuit court of Appeals, the court found that the attorney in charge of a trust was liable for all of the costs of arbitration when the arbitration committee sees fit to assess expenses against specific parties. This case is important because the…