Should you exploit the new $5 million lifetime gift exemption? In late 2010, Congress reunified the estate tax, gift tax and generation-skipping tax (GST), giving them all top rates of 35% with $5 million lifetime individual exemptions.1 In addition, the estate and gift tax exemptions are now portable between married couples. Upon the death of [...]

With more Americans living into fragility, POAs and other advanced directives are becoming more important. The point of the POA. A Power of Attorney is a legal instrument that delegates an individual’s legal authority to another person. If an individual is incapacitated or mentally incompetent, the POA assigns a trusted party to make decisions on [...]

Killing Several Birds with One Stone In planning for your retirement, you may face several financial issues. Maybe you’d like to generate retirement income, but don’t want to pay capital gains tax on investments you’ve held for several years. Perhaps you’d like to minimize your income taxes during retirement. You also might like to reduce [...]

A tool to transfer wealth to the next generation at lower tax cost. Family limited partnerships, or FLPs, let you make gifts of partnership interests to family members while you maintain control over the underlying assets. In estate planning, FLPs can be very useful. Successful families create them with three objectives in mind: lowering income [...]

We will all leave this world sometime. Why leave unanswered questions with those we love? We all want to live a significant, successful life. Yet how many of us realize that our important, positive contributions can last long after we are gone? Two things are certain: death and taxes. Some of us grasp that reality [...]