Do You Want to Include Philanthropic Goals in Your Estate Plan?

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Many people support charities throughout their life, either with one-time gifts or recurring contributions. You might wish to continue that practice when you pass away by gifting a portion of your estate to a cause you care about deeply.

Philanthropic giving allows you to leave a legacy behind and support something that is important to you. The organizations you select for philanthropic giving in your estate plan should reflect your values. There are many common ways to think about philanthropic giving but working with a knowledgeable estate planning attorney is one of the best. Philanthropic giving includes things such as gifting money or time to a cause that furthers societal good. In the concept of an estate plan, this typically applies to assets or money.

There are five common ways that you may wish to include philanthropic giving in your estate plan. These include a will, qualified charitable distributions, irrevocable living trusts, gifts or donations. The most efficient giving strategy will depend on your personal goals and what is in the best interests of the organization you are gifting to overall.

You can also choose to support multiple charities in your estate or make gifts to your alma mater or other organizations. Since so much depends on what you want to achieve, it’s valuable to walk through a few scenarios with the help of qualified estate planners so you can select the gifting avenues most aligned with your goals and the organization’s needs.

Having a conversation with your estate planning lawyer will assist you in reviewing all of the details for what’s involved and deciding on a strategy that is most applicable for you and the organization that you have selected. If you haven’t already met with your estate planning attorney, set aside a time to do so now. You can decide on the best strategy for gifting to a charity for their benefit and in consideration of your own estate plan, too.

Work with our Pasadena office of estate planners to get more help.

 

Can I Use My Roth IRA as An Estate Planning Tool?

by Estate PlanningRoth IRA

There are many different estate planning tools and strategies available to you. Working with a qualified estate planning lawyer is one of the best ways to review all assets inside your estate plan, as well as those that may pass outside of traditional probate. One such estate planning asset is a Roth IRA. This does not just have to be used as your own individual retirement plan.

It can also be used as a way to transfer assets to the next generation. Assets contributed to a Roth IRA are taxed, which means that distributions from the account are tax free. If you don’t end up needing the money for retirement, you may allow all of the money in the IRA to grow tax free to be passed on to your heirs.

If your spouse is the beneficiary in your Roth IRA, your spouse can become the owner of the account when you pass away. They can roll it into a new IRA or put the IRA in their name, and it will be treated by the IRS as if your spouse had always owned it. Your spouse is not required to take any distributions from the IRA if they do not meet the age requirements to do so.

The rules for grandchildren and children, however, are different for inheriting IRAs. These individuals must withdraw all assets inside the inherited account in no less than in no longer than 10 years after they inherited. Other non-spouse beneficiaries may be treated as spouses, such as chronically ill individuals, minor children and people who are not more than 10 years younger than the account owner. To make sure you have appropriately planned for all Roth IRA issues in your state plan, contact a lawyer in Pasadena, CA to discuss your options.

 

What Are the Most Popular Estate Planning Documents to Consider?

by Estate PlanningLiving WillPower of AttorneyTrusts

As you create your estate plan, it is important to have a good handle on all of your assets and liabilities as well as the personal goals you have surrounding the transfer of those assets to your loved ones in the future.

Defining your own goals and what’s most important to you over the course of your life and after you pass away as your legacy will help you to determine which components belong in your estate plan. A qualified estate planning lawyer is a vital component of helping you decide the right strategies, documents, and tools to accomplish those goals.

Each person’s estate plan may look different, but it is valuable to understand some of what the different tools can do. Your estate plan may include things, such as:

  • Creating a trust.
  • Purchasing long term care insurance or developing a Medicaid qualification plan.
  • Naming a beneficiary and retirement account, annuity, pay-on-death bank account or life insurance policy.
  • Purchasing jointly owned property or adding a joint owner to existing property.
  • Creating a living will.
  • Developing a transfer-on-death instrument to pass ownership of your property to a beneficiary after you pass away.
  • Creating power of attorney documents to name financial and other agents who may step into make decisions and take actions on your behalf if you’re unable to do so.

Your unique circumstances will determine which of these tools you need and what should be evaluated as part of your estate plan. You may incorporate or remove various aspects of these documents as you get older, but it is equally important to plan for your life using power of attorney documents and living wills as it is to determine what happens to your assets after you pass away. Meet with our California estate planning lawyers to discuss the specifics of your plan.

What Does it Mean to Title Something to a Trust?

by Estate PlanningTrusts

A trust is an excellent estate planning tool when you’ve selected the right vehicle and funded the trust. In order to fund your California trust, assets you want managed by it must be retitled into the trust.

If you establish a trust with the help of a knowledgeable estate planning attorney as part of your overall estate plan, make sure to transfer those assets into the trust in the future. Typically, this is a simple process that means listing the assets as part of the trust. However, if there are deeds or other titling procedures in place, this is much more complicated. This refers to those situations in which you’re transferring real estate property into a trust.

A new deed must be obtained and filed, insurance companies must be notified, and, in some situations, a lender may need to provide permission regarding the real estate property. If you do not appropriately retitle and transfer a piece of property into a trust, this means that the estate item will still go through probate after the creator’s death.

One of the primary reasons for establishing a trust in the first place is to avoid the expense and time-consuming nature of probate. Working with a knowledgeable estate planning attorney is one of the best ways to identify which type of trust you should use for estate planning purposes, and to verify that the process is carried through completely from the time you decide to establish a trust to the retitling of that item into the trust. Make sure you mark time on your calendar every year to review your existing estate plan and to discuss options for making any revisions.

When you work with our Pasadena estate planning law office, we’ll answer your key questions around how best to plan for the future of your assets based on your personal goals.

 

 

 

What Role Does Timing Play in Making a Financial Gift?

by Estate PlanningGifting

Making a gift to someone is a worthwhile consideration as part of your estate plan, but there are numerous factors to be evaluated and discussed in advance. For example, the question of “when?” is often the most important one you can address with your estate planning attorney.

There may be benefits to making a gift during your lifetime, establishing a gift that transfers to your chosen beneficiary upon your death, or a gift that transfers to a child or grandchild after the second spouse passes away. The current gift tax exemption is another consideration particularly for high-net-worth individuals and families.

Right now, individuals are able to gift up to $12.06 million on their own and married couples can gift as much as $24.12 million in their lifetimes without generating any additional taxes. Currently, however, that gift tax exemption expires at the end of 2025, at which point it drops to $5 million per individual and will be continually adjusted for inflation.

Make sure that you discuss all of your estate planning options and the intentions you have for making a gift to a loved one in advance. The support of an attorney is very valuable in helping you establish strategies, documents, and tools to align with your personal goals for estate planning reasons.

If you want to make a gift now to maximize the gift tax exemption, make sure it aligns with your overall estate planning goals. If you intend to make the gift in the future, work with a lawyer who can assist you in determining the most efficient and effective manner for transferring that asset.

Need help? Reach out to our Pasadena estate planners now.

How Is Beneficiary Designation Different from a Will?

by Beneficiary DesignationEstate PlanningWills

In your estate planning process, you need to think about items that will transfer through your will in probate and those that pass outside of it. Most people assume that a will covers all of their needs in an estate plan, but it can be a big mistake to believe that. Your will doesn’t incorporate or determine the transfer of every asset you own, since some may be handled by a trust or through beneficiary designation.

Beneficiary designation is a term used to refer to assets that typically transfer outside of the probate process. The two most common examples of this are retirement accounts and life insurance policies. Your life insurance policy and retirement account company will review the beneficiary designations you have on file if something happens to you.

Regardless of what is stated in your will, your beneficiary designations dictate how your assets will be transferred. This means that if it’s been some time since you updated your beneficiaries, this could cause problems for your chosen heirs. For example, if the person named as a beneficiary in your life insurance policy has passed away and no contingent or backup beneficiary were named, this may mean that your life insurance policy proceeds go into probate. Furthermore, if you’ve recently gotten divorced and have failed to update your estate plan and beneficiary designations accordingly, your ex-spouse may legally be entitled to proceeds from your life insurance policy.

A regular review of your estate plan is one of the only ways to minimize these problems and to ensure that your estate plan addresses the most important concerns for your next steps. Schedule a time to meet with an estate planning lawyer in Pasadena.

Couldn’t I Just Use a Downloadable Power of Attorney Form?

by Estate PlanningPower of Attorney

If you already recognize the benefits of establishing a power of attorney, you may assume that the simplest route to complete it is downloading a form from the internet. A power of attorney appoints another person, referred to as an agent, to take on specific responsibilities or general duties based on how you outline the power of attorney document.

Since the selection of this individual is so important, and you’re giving them a great deal of responsibility, it is very important to ensure that the document is accurate. A power of attorney is one of the most important legal documents you’ll create. Each state has very specific rules about what belongs in a power of attorney, who can be appointed to serve as a power of attorney agent, and what is required at the time the document is signed.

There are many Do-It-Yourself power of attorney forms available online.

However, using a one-size-fits-all form leaves out the possibility of unique considerations that you may wish to incorporate in your power of attorney, such as:

  • The scope of the agent’s powers. Certain powers may not be included unless they’re specifically mentioned, for example.
  • Whether the power of attorney will take effect immediately or only at a certain point in the future.
  • Execution-related issues, since some states may require a power of attorney to be notarized, others a signature, and others still require witnesses.

It is very important to work with a knowledgeable estate planning attorney who understands your state’s rules regarding what must be included in the power of attorney and incorporated on signature to make it legally valid. Contact a California estate planning lawyer now to learn more about your planning options and to create a valid power of attorney document.

 

 

 

 

Estate Plan Strategies to Consider When You Add New Assets

by AssetsEstate PlanningLiving Trusts

When you add or dispose of certain assets, this may require an update in your estate plan. This includes opening a new investment account, selling property, or acquiring new property. In a thorough estate plan, all of these assets should be incorporated with a transfer through your probate estate, or through other estate planning strategies like a living trust.

Adding New Assets: What to Know

The value of your estate may change with substantial differences in property ownership, which is a good reason to create a revocable trust that may help you with distributing these assets in the most cost effective, private, and efficient way. If you are aiming to pass on these assets to a child who is currently a minor, it may be appropriate to establish another trustee to distribute these assets.

Each asset should be considered both as part of your bigger estate plan and as an individual item. This way, you can select planning strategies for that item that protect your interests best. You might choose to put an asset in a trust rather than a transfer-on-death designation to add more control and structure, for example.

Furthermore, you may choose to use a trustee to transfer assets to those beneficiaries that you may believe are unable to handle these assets responsibly on their own. If you have existing investment accounts, you may also be eligible to transfer these into a revocable trust.

However, you should always work with a qualified estate planning attorney who can tell you more about all of the assets that make up your probate and non-probate estate. Certain assets pass outside of probate, such as many retirement accounts and life insurance policies.

Contact our Pasadena, CA estate office to discover more information about creating your own estate.

When Was the Last Time You Reviewed the Legal Status of Your California Home Title?

by Estate PlanningLiving TrustsReal Estate

Anyone who owns real property in California needs to think about the most appropriate avenue for passing this on to future generations. Many individuals consider using a tool like a living trust to ensure that the property goes to the chosen beneficiary through an estate plan.

The primary goal of leveraging a living trust for real property is to avoid probate and to ensure a streamlined manner of dealing with property in the event of death or incapacity. However, an estate plan with a living trust is only complete when you have appropriately retitled the home into ownership by the trust. The beginning of the new year is a valuable opportunity not only to meet with your Pasadena estate planning attorney, but to review the legal status of the title to your home and any other real property.

Sometimes you may have drafted your estate plan with the intention to create a living trust, but failed to retitle the home, meaning that you own the home, and it may become part of your probate estate if something happens to you. Make sure that your estate planning lawyer in Pasadena has reviewed this with you and also has a comprehensive list of all real property that you own. The second step is then to verify that the title of all of this real property has been properly established in line with your previously created estate plan or the new estate plan that you create with the help of a lawyer.

Our Pasadena area lawyers are highly experienced in crafting estate planning strategies for those who own real property in California or have recently moved to California and need to update their estate plan. Communicate with our office today to set up a consultation to discuss your options.

When Tradition Just Doesn’t Work for Estate Planning Purposes

by Estate PlanningExecutor

You may be familiar with estate planning because a loved one failed to do it, or because you’ve heard that it is common to frequently give most or all of your estate to the oldest child. Doing things because you think you need to do them in your estate could prove problematic down the road.

Every family has unique dynamics that should all be considered in the estate planning process. Finding the right lawyer to help you navigate this and to ensure that your plan aligns with what you hope to get out of estate planning is important. If you name your oldest child or even an oldest male child as the agent to oversee your healthcare money if you become incapacitated, or the executor of your will, this could spell disaster.

Think first about selecting these chosen agents based on their abilities and willingness to handle your affairs, not birth order. This may include geographic considerations about who’s located closest to you, which of your intended beneficiaries is most responsible and organized, or someone who’s a good leader and capable of handling conflicts down the road.

Sometimes you may need to split these duties up. For example, one of your children may be better equipped to make important end of life decisions that respect your wishes, whereas another one is very organized and capable of handling executor style roles. No matter what you think is the right course of action for your future planning, a lawyer can help you put those plans into action.

Working with an estate planning attorney to document your decisions is the important way to close the loop on all of these important considerations. Our lawyers can work with you to create a comprehensive estate plan that aligns with your needs and future goals. Contact our Pasadena estate planning law office to set up an initial meeting to discuss your options.