Estate Planning

Estate planning ultimately concerns transferring your wealth to whom you wish when you die or become incompetent while effectively dealing with issues of taxes, publicity, asset protection, or your health and care. To address these concerns and issues effectively, you often need an entity other than you or your spouse to hold assets, to distribute money correctly, and to carry out your wishes when you no longer can. That entity is a trust. A trust is a legal entity – just like a person is...Read Full Story

A key part of financial planning is protecting your assets from unfair and aggressive claims against you based on your apparent wealth – or ability to pay. Of course, nothing makes you so vulnerable to such claims as the visibility of your wealth. Using a land trust, you can help hide some of your real estate holdings. Here’s the scoop… -What is a land trust and what does it do? A land trust is a revocable contract between two or more parties. The first party is the owner of the property...Read Full Story

When you purchase a life insurance policy on your life, you can obviously designate a beneficiary for its death benefit. But if there’s no live or designated beneficiary, it’ll go into your estate’s probate process with its own beneficiaries. Here’s why you should avoid letting this happen… Ideally, you designated a beneficiary for your life insurance when you purchased your life insurance policy. If you were undecided at that time or the person you designated has since died, then you – or...Read Full Story

Wills are far from perfect. Every will filed in this country is a public document that anyone can see. Anyone!   Do you like hearing about the private details of celebrities? Of course! Even a simple Internet search will lead you to dozens of famous wills, such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Paul Newman, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana and William Shakespeare, just to name a few. Your will would be just as public.   Why? Wills pass through probate court. Like...Read Full Story

Both a  trust  and a  will  are a means of channeling the distribution or transferring of wealth to one’s heirs or beneficiaries. When planned intelligently, they can prove to be effective in saving yours as well as your successors’ taxes as well. Trusts specifically work in the interest of safeguarding your rights and that of your beneficiaries. To further make the process of transferring your property to your family easier, you should always have a  will  in place. Typically, wills are a...Read Full Story