Articles Posted in Estate Planning and Documents

The rapid expansion of international public and private companies has brought about an exponential increase in the establishment of subsidiaries far from global headquarters. Such growth has meant that companies are often requiring employees across professional sectors to relocate to offices maintained in cities where significant operations are carried out. Local businesses of global enterprises often have responsibility for administrative, manufacturing or operational activities including, for example, the local management of store and bank groups. Depending upon the nature of a company’s current or anticipated business strategic planning, employees may be required to relocate for varying lengths of time to foreign countries. The length of the mandate may require the consideration by the employee of moving alone or accompanied by family members.
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Estate planners often focus on the tax benefits of making a gift, as smart planning can help reduce or eliminate a wide array of taxes on the estate and individual. But if you thought the primary motivation for donor gift-giving was related to taxation, you are mistaken. The reason behind the choice to make a gift to charity over a family member runs deep-it is about an emotional connection to the mission of the benefiting organization. Neuroscience has revealed that giving is hard-wired into our brains, perhaps giving validity to the aphorism that “it is better to give than to receive.” With the right estate planning, giving can actually lead to receiving, in the form of tax benefits.
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When you think of your “assets,” what are the first things that come to mind? Likely, your tangible assets: your home, car, cash, furniture, documents, clothes, etc. Not surprisingly, people often forget or do not realize that pictures they uploaded onto websites and applications like Facebook and Instagram, information in user accounts on web-based platforms like My Verizon and myAT&T, documents uploaded to the “Cloud,” and emails stored in your email accounts are also “assets” that must be accounted for after a person passes or becomes incapacitated.
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Hippocrates wrote, “vita brevis, ars longa.” Translated, this means “life is short, art is long.” It is a common reference to how time limits life and how art may prolong those limits. In an article that explores what motivates people to make charitable gifts, one gift planner explained that “[s]ome donors are motivated to make a gift that will last forever.” (Alexandra P. Brovey, My Client, a Donor? TRUSTS & ESTATES: THE WEALTH MANAGEMENT.COM JOURNAL FOR ESTATE-PLANNING PROFESSIONALS, October 2013, at 19, 20.)
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In a recent article titled, “Look Who’s Moving In With Your Aging Parent,” author and mediator Carolyn Rosenblatt addressed concerns relating to the care of aging parents’ finances. In the article, Rosenblatt told the story of a 78-year old man named Arthur who suffers from early stage dementia, a mental illness common among men and women aged 65 and older.
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The Internet has substantially altered the way people interact and express themselves, and social networking accounts, e-mail accounts, and other digital assets have become increasingly valuable in recent years. Because the value of digital assets has only been recognized in the last decade, people often do not take them into consideration when creating an estate plan. Additionally, there is hardly any little legal authority or rules addressing how digital assets should be valued and treated in a probate context. However, an even bigger problem relates to determining ownership of digital assets like social networking pages, which are created by an individual, but maintained and hosted on computer servers of large companies. As a result, digital assets have recently created problems for probate courts.
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“Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” – Benjamin Franklin
This quote by Benjamin Franklin is probably the most succinct and accurate statement as to why estate planning is best carried out with the help of a knowledgeable and experienced attorney. Over the past few years, a number of websites have begun to offer a quick and inexpensive method for individuals to put together seemingly “simple” estate planning documents, such as living trusts, advanced directives, and wills. While this method would surely save the estate planner some time and money in the short-term, it is clear that such shortcuts can surely backfire after the testator has passed away, leaving his or her beneficiaries to bear the costs and burdens of litigation to interpret a will that was created without the benefit of effective legal advice.
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Charitable giving is an American tradition, and Americans give to charitable organizations at high levels. Gifts in the form of donations of cash remain the favorite vehicle for positively impacting charities of personal significance. Increasingly, however, individuals are seeking tax advantageous methods of utilizing asset-rich portfolios in order to achieve philanthropic financial goals. Now more than ever, charitable giving involves the donation of assets other than cash as effective and tax efficient methods for effectuating charitable gifts.
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For many, the purpose of estate planning is to dispose of one’s property upon death in a manner that ensures that one’s loved ones will be taken care of. While some accomplish this by devising their property in a will to their intended beneficiaries, others take advantage of what are often called “will substitutes.” For example, life insurance policies are one type of will substitute. Unlike wills, life insurance policies do not go to policy beneficiaries via probate, which makes insurance policies potentially useful estate planning mechanisms for tax avoidance purposes. Despite this obvious plus, children of the baby boomers-deemed “generation X” in Jeff Reeves’ article, “Survey: Gen X seriously short on life insurance”-have on the whole not been taking advantage of life insurance as an investment and estate planning vehicle. According to the article, a recent survey by New York Life revealed that on average Americans born between 1965 and 1976 require life insurance in an amount nearly $449,000.00 greater than that which they have opted for. Furthermore, almost 20% of “Generation X” does not have any life insurance coverage, a figure that is up from the 5% reported in 2008.
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