Estate planning
Book - 2023
"Estate Planning For Dummies teaches you the ins and outs of estate planning. This everyone-friendly guide walks you through building a solid estate plan, whatever your current financial situation. In easy-to-understand language, you'll learn the ins and outs of estate planning, including what happens to your stuff--cash, real estate, businesses, retirement funds, everything--when you pass away. This new edition is updated for the many recent changes in estate taxes and inheritance law"--
Saved in:
- Subjects
- Genres
- Handbooks and manuals
- Published
-
Hoboken, NJ :
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
[2023]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Other Authors
- Edition
- 2nd edition
- Item Description
- "Learning made easy" -- Cover.
"Pass along money and property, not your tax burden ; organize your assets and help heirs bypass probate proceedings ; plan for your estate with wills, trusts, POAs, and more" -- Cover.
Includes index. - Physical Description
- xiii, 376 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- ISBN
- 9781394158546
- Introduction
- About This Book
- Foolish Assumptions
- Icons Used in This Book
- Beyond the Book
- Where to Go from Here
- Part 1. Getting Started with Estate Planning
- Chapter 1. Congratulations: You Have an Estate!
- What Is an Estate?
- The basics: Definitions and terminology
- Property types
- Types of property interest
- Why You Need to Plan Your Estate
- Why Your Estate-Planning Goals Are Different from Your Neighbor's
- Why Estate-Planning Lingo Isn't Really a Foreign Language
- The Critical Path Method to Planning Your Estate
- Getting Help with Your Estate Planning
- How to make sure your team of advisers is "FAIL" safe
- Working with a financial-planning professional
- Knowing what to expect from your accountant for your estate planning
- Your insurance agent and your estate
- Working with your attorney
- Chapter 2. Bean Counting: Figuring Out What You're Worth
- Calculating the Value of Your Real Property
- Your home on the range
- That timeshare in Timbuktu and other hideaways
- Your investments as a landlord
- Your real estate partnerships
- Calculating the Value of Everything Else: Your Personal Property
- Tangible personal property: Items you can touch
- Intangible personal property: Bank accounts, stocks, and bonds
- Dead Reckoning: Subtracting Your Debts from Your Assets
- Giving Gifts throughout Your Life to Reduce Your Estate's Value
- Calculating Adjustments in Your Estate's Value Due to Major Changes in Asset Valuations
- Part 2. Where There's a Will, There's a Way
- Chapter 3. Understanding the Basics of Wills
- Planning for Your Will
- Getting to Know the Different Types of Wills
- Simple wills
- Other types of wills
- Choosing Your Will's Contents
- Opening clauses
- Giving clauses
- Ending clauses
- Safeguarding Your Will
- Changing, Amending, and Revoking Your Will
- Why you may need to change your will when something happens
- Ways to change your will
- Protecting Your Loved Ones from Your Unloved Ones
- Figuring Out Your Will Status
- Testacy: When you've nailed everything down
- Intestacy: When you die with zero "willpower"
- Partial intestacy: When the vultures start circling
- Chapter 4. Tied Hands and Helping Hands: What You Can and Can't Do with Your Will
- Making Your Peace with Statutes That Affect Your Will
- Identifying Statutes That Your Will Can Change
- Abatement: There's not enough in the cupboard for everyone
- Ademption: Some property is missing
- Anti-lapse: Someone dies before you do
- Divorce: High noon at Splitsville
- Simultaneous death: Sorry, but we have to talk about it
- Living (and Dying) with the Laws That Your Will Can't Change
- Community property
- Common-law property and spousal elective shares
- Homestead allowance: Keeping a house for kiddies and spouse
- Homestead exemption: How the law protects your house from your creditors
- Exempt property: How the law protects your personal property from creditors
- Family allowance: Drawing from your estate to protect your family
- Oops! Taking care of VIPs who aren't in the will
- Chapter 5. Probate: Top of the Ninth Inning for Your Estate
- Probing Probate: What You Should Know
- The probate process
- Some complicating factors to the probate process
- Knowing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Probate
- Probate: The good side
- Probate: The bad and downright ugly side
- Streamlining the Probate Process
- Appointing Your Personal Representative
- Identifying your personal representative's role
- Deciding who's eligible to be your personal representative
- Avoiding the pitfalls
- Paying your personal representative
- Thinking Things through When Someone Asks You to Be a Personal Rep
- Chapter 6. Dodging Probate: Saving Time and Money with a Will Substitute
- Understanding Will Substitutes
- Sorting through the List of Will Substitutes
- Figuring out joint tenancy
- Setting up a living trust
- Identifying Some Less Common but Worthy Will Substitutes
- Tenancy by the entirety: The spouse's option
- Joint tenancy bank accounts
- Savings bonds
- Payable on death accounts
- Deeds
- IRAs and your other retirement accounts
- Part 3. Matters of Trust
- Chapter 7. Understanding Trusts
- Defining Trusts, Avoiding Hype
- Shazam! An oversimplified definition of trusts
- Adding a bit of complexity with an ingredient list
- Adding some lawyer talk to the definition
- Attaching all the bells and whistles to a trust
- Trust Power: Making Your Beneficiaries Smile
- Avoiding taxes
- Avoiding probate
- Protecting your estate (and your beneficiary's or beneficiaries' estate)
- Providing funds for educational purposes
- Benefiting charities and institutions
- Sorting Out Trusts - from Here to Eternity
- Trusts for when you're alive versus when you're gone
- Changing your mind: Revocable and irrevocable trusts
- Chapter 8. Trusts You May Want to Trust - or Not
- Saying "I Do" to a Marriage-Oriented Trust
- Marital deduction and QTIP trusts
- Bypass trusts
- Considering Charitable Trusts
- Protecting Your Estate with Protective Trusts
- Spendthrift trusts
- Supplemental needs and special needs trusts
- Educational trusts
- Minor's trusts
- GRAT, GRUT, GRIT: Chewing over the Grantor-Retained Trusts
- Sidestepping Estate Taxes with an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust
- Chapter 9. Working a Trust into Your Estate Plan
- Linking Your Estate-Related Tax Planning with Your Trust Planning
- Looking at Your Goals and Objectives for Setting Up Trusts
- Deciding What Property to Place in Trust
- Linking Your Estate-Planning and Trust Goals with Specific Property
- Stepping Back and Comparing Both Trust and Nontrust Options
- Weighing Trust Trade-offs
- Finalizing Your Choices: Dotting the I's and Crossing the T's
- Part 4. Life, Death, and Taxes
- Chapter 10. Preparing for the Tug-of-War with the Taxman
- Navigating through the Bermuda Triangle of Federal Taxes
- The gift tax
- The generation-skipping transfer tax
- The estate (death) tax
- Deciphering State Inheritance and Estate Taxes
- Protecting Your Property (Including Home Sweet Home!) from the Estate Recovery Act
- Chapter 11. The Gift Tax: Isn't Giving a Gift Enough?
- Giving a Gift: The Basics
- There are gifts - and there are taxable gifts
- Not all gifts are taxable
- Looking Inside Three Common Gift Tax Situations
- Example #1: $5,000 to darling daughter
- Example #2: $7,000 each to all three adorable kids
- Example #3: $21,000 to the fairest of them all
- Exclusions
- Gift Splitting
- Valuing Gifts
- Fair market value
- Filing Gift Tax Forms
- Chapter 12. Skipping around the Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax
- The Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax: A Parable
- Taking Comfort from the Exemption
- Playing Hopscotch: Understanding Generation-Skipping Transfers
- Knowing the rules for skipping generations (so you don't break 'em)
- Clarifying the generations and confusing complications
- Making Sense of GSTT Rates
- Looking Deeper into Generation-Skipping Transfers and the GSTT
- Scanning over the skip types
- Direct skips
- Indirect skips
- Chapter 13. Paying or Not Paying the Death Tax: That's the Question
- Discovering Federal Estate Tax Basics
- Figuring out how the federal estate tax works
- Using your exemption to sidestep the government
- Looking at the highest federal estate rates
- Tracking a moving target
- Digging Down to the Bottom Line
- Figuring out your gross estate's value
- Calculating deductions from your gross estate
- Going for extra credit
- Choosing How to Pay Estate Taxes
- Filing the Estate Tax Return
- Stepping Up to the Plate and Filling the Bases (Basis)
- Chapter 14. Planning to Minimize All Your Estate-Related Taxes
- Figuring Out Where You Are Today
- Determining your estate's value
- Totaling your gifts to date
- Checking the tax tables
- Looking out for tax traps
- Fortune Telling: Picturing the Future as Best You Can
- Predicting the future
- Looking at several scenarios for the federal estate tax
- Blending your present strategies into the future
- Considering the impact of death, divorce, and other bum breaks
- Carefully comparing, betting the house, and rolling the dice
- Deciding on Strategies and Trade-offs
- Gifting versus leaving property as part of your estate
- Imagining the ups and downs of leaving your estate to your spouse
- Avoiding estate taxes on your life insurance proceeds
- Using gifts below the exclusion amount
- Double-dipping on tax savings from charitable gifts
- Putting Together a Comprehensive Estate-Related Tax Plan
- Fixing the holes
- Starting on that gift giving
- Setting up trusts if necessary
- Planning ahead for property transfers upon your death
- Part 5. Estate Planning for Family Businesses
- Chapter 15. Grasping the Basics of Estate Planning for Family Businesses
- Defining "Family Business"
- Making the Critical Estate-Related Decisions Up Front
- Choosing to stay or go
- Adjusting the family business ownership picture
- Deciding on your succession plan's details
- How the Form of Business Ownership Affects Your Estate
- Sole ownership: Everything is mine!
- Partnership: We're in this business together
- Corporation: Limiting your liability
- Limited partnership
- Limited liability company: A reliable, easy go-to
- Calculating the Value of Your Family Business
- Book value
- Discounted cash flow
- Sales multiple
- Liquidation value
- Getting to the bottom line - with expert help
- Dealing with Business Evolution: Stuff Darwin Never Imagined
- Chapter 16. Transferring Ownership and Paying Estate Taxes in a Family Business
- Exploring the Ins and Outs of Buy-Sell Agreements
- Looking at a typical buy-sell agreement
- Funding the buy-sell agreement
- Selecting the right form of buy-sell agreement
- Thinking through your buy-sell choices
- Transferring Ownership to a Family Member
- Identifying Estate-Tax Considerations for Family Businesses
- Don't crowd me - spread out!
- Valuing real estate for estate-tax purposes
- Shopping for more discounts at the family-business store
- Part 6. Crafting a Comprehensive Estate Plan
- Chapter 17. Factoring Insurance into Your Estate Plan
- Using Insurance to Protect Your Assets
- Protecting what you've already got
- Insuring the future: Protecting what you hope to acquire
- Shielding the gifts you hope to leave behind
- Sorting Out the Kinds of Coverage You Need
- Life insurance
- Health insurance
- Disability income insurance
- Long-term care insurance
- Automobile insurance
- Homeowner's or renter's insurance
- Umbrella liability insurance
- Looking More Closely at Life Insurance
- Whole life insurance
- Term life insurance
- Business-provided life insurance
- Understanding Life Insurance Tax Implications
- Asking the Right Estate-Related Questions about Insurance
- Chapter 18. Connecting Your Retirement Funds to Your Estate Plans
- Deciding What Your Nest Egg Is Really For
- Strategy #1: Satisfy your needs and plop the leftovers away
- Strategy #2: Walk the balance beam between retirement needs and estate plans
- Linking Retirement and Estate Planning: A Tough job, but You Can Do It
- Tapping into a traditional pension plan
- Managing your IRA accounts
- Estate planning for 401(k) and similar plans
- Social Security and your estate planning
- Chapter 19. Estate Planning in Exceptional Situations
- Working a Divorce into the Plan
- Divvying up the stuff - and ignoring the estate plan?
- Considering children and divorce
- Planning for Unmarried Relationships
- Untangling the Complexities of Guardianship and Your Estate
- Guardianship for your children
- Guardianship for yourself
- Doomsday Stuff: Factoring Incompetence and Death into Your Plan
- A durable power of attorney: Your personal representative while you're alive
- The living will: Giving directions when you can't communicate
- Realizing why the court appoints a guardian when you're incompetent
- Taking Care of Fido and Fluffy
- Part 7. The Part of Tens
- Chapter 20. Ten Questions to Get You Rolling on Your Estate Plan
- Why Do I Even Need an Estate Plan?
- If I Need an Estate Plan, Why Doesn't Everyone Have One?
- What Are My Top Three Estate-Planning Goals?
- Who Do I Want to Take Care Of?
- What's the Best Way to Protect My Children?
- How Much Help Do I Need?
- What's My Estate-Planning Budget?
- Does My Attorney Have the Right Experience?
- Who Are My Confidants about These Plans?
- How Do I Know I Can Do My Estate Plan?
- Chapter 21. Avoiding Ten Common Mistakes and Problems in Your Will
- Forgetting to Review Your Will Annually
- Forgetting to Include a Residuary ("Leftovers") Clause
- Forgetting the "just in Case" Contingencies
- Sticking with Your Personal Rep When You Really Need a Substitute
- Forgetting about All Those Pesky Statutes That Affect Wills
- Getting Too Precise in Your Will
- Using Your Beneficiaries as Will Witnesses
- Failing to Factor in the Personal Side
- Keeping Important Information from Your Attorney
- Rushing through Your Will
- Chapter 22. Ten Crucial Estate-Planning Questions
- How Do I Choose the Right Person to Be the Executor of My Estate?
- How Do I Not Offend Loved Ones with My Estate Planning?
- How Do I Deal with Family Members Not Following My Estate Plan?
- How Do I Account for Asset Value Changes in My Estate Plan?
- Can I Appoint Multiple Executors to Handle My Estate?
- What if My Sixth Spouse Doesn't Agree with What I Want for My Estate Plan?
- How Do I Choose Which of My Children Will Handle My Estate?
- How Do I Prevent Theft from my Estate?
- Why Does My Estate Plan Seem So Different from Other Plans?
- How Do I Know How a Charity Will Use My Gift or Bequest?
- Index