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Is your trust fully funded
I often review trusts that have been drafted by other attorneys that need to be restated. When I do this, I always review what has been funded into the trust and what has not been moved into the...
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Coordinating Your Retirement Plans with Your Estate Plan
Why are retirement plan beneficiary designations so important for coordinating your retirement plans with your estate plan? Your retirement plans cannot be owned by your revocable trust, so you need...
View ArticleCalifornia Advance Health Care Directives and End-of-Life Decisions
A question that comes up from time to time in my practice from clients is what exactly does Part 2 of the Advance Health Care Directive mean when they are referring to end-of-life decisions. The...
View ArticleProviding Creditor Protection and Stretch-Out of Your Retirement Accounts for...
Most people understand the importance of setting up a trust to manage and control their property at incapacity and death. But we often see a serious disconnect when it comes to retirement account...
View ArticlePROVIDING CREDITOR PROTECTION AND STRETCH-OUT OF YOUR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS FOR...
Another major problem with listing children or grandchildren as the contingent beneficiary on your retirement accounts is the lack of creditor protection. If the beneficiary has full control over the...
View ArticleProviding Creditor Protection and Stretch-Out of Your Retirement Accounts for...
Providing Creditor Protection and Stretch-Out of Your Retirement Accounts for Your Children or Grandchildren continued..In most cases, when the beneficiary is one or more generations younger than the...
View ArticleProviding Creditor Protection and Stretch-Out of Your Retirement Accounts for...
Providing Creditor Protection and Stretch-Out of Your Retirement Accounts for Your Children or Grandchildren continued..Next, the custodian of your retirement account will provide a beneficiary form...
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Irrevocable Trust Planning to Provide Asset Protection for our Elder Loved Ones
We help clients avoid the expensive and burdensome court process by having certain documents as part of their estate plan. The key documents are a Revocable Trust (and sometimes an Irrevocable Trust),...
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Protecting Your Wealth with a Domestic Asset Protection Trust
Just what is a Domestic Asset Protection Trust, or what is more commonly referred to as a DAPT? It’s a type of irrevocable trust that is self-settled and acts like a spendthrift trust which doesn’t...
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Why LLCs are Great Asset Protection Vehicles for Your Rental Real Estate
The basic idea behind asset protection planning for real estate (other than the family home) is to create a legal separation between you and the real estate. This can be accomplished with a Limited...
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Asset Protecting a Child's Inheritance
When leaving property to a minor or adult child, clients can choose exactly how they want to leave it to them. The property can be left outright, in trust until the beneficiary reaches a certain age or...
View ArticleWhy Having a Bypass Trust in Your Revocable Trust Might Still be Relevant
As of January 1, 2013, the federal estate tax exemption is now $5,250,000 per person. This means that each person can pass during his or her life time (or at death) up to this amount without imposition...
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Who Moved My Cheese? Estate Tax Exemption Set to Fall to $1MM January 1, 2013
As you may already know, the Federal Estate Tax Exemption is set to fall back to $1 million per person with a top tax rate of 55% on January 1, 2013 (this is the amount each U.S. citizen can pass to...
View ArticleProtecting Mom and Dad's Assets from a Nursing Home Stay
There is nothing scarier to an elderly person than the prospect of losing their entire estate to a nursing home stay. They often wonder, what will happen to me after all the money is gone. In San...
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Why Whitney Houston's Estate Is So Troubled
As you already know, the world has lost one of it’s greatest talents, Whitney Houston. What you probably don’t know however is that she botched her estate plan.Whitney Houston’s will was recently filed...
View ArticleGene Simmons Takes a Trip to an Estate Planning Attorney's Office Because of...
In a recent episode of Gene Simmons Family Jewels (lead singer of the band Kiss) and his lovely wife Shannon were in the office of an estate planning attorney to draw up their estate plan. In this...
View ArticleHow to Ensure Your IRA Gets Stretched Out for Your Children and Provides Them...
Even with the decline in the stock market this past year, there are trillions of dollars still being held in IRAs. In fact, for a large number of people, their IRA represents one of the largest assets...
View ArticleThe Dangers of Do-It Yourself Estate Plans-US News and World Report
Want to know the real dangers of trying to do it yourself? Go to this US News and World...
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The Biggest Point of Failure in Living Trusts
I felt it necessary to write about this because I have seen all too many times what can and does practically happen to make revocable living trusts fail. What is the single biggest point of failure? It...
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Protecting Your Children's IRA Inheritance with a Retirement Protector TrustTM
If your retirement accounts are $200,000 or more in total, your heirs may be at risk of losing more than half of the balance to taxes!Money you have intended for your loved ones could go to a creditor,...
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