The Sensible Taxation and Equity Promotion (STEP) Act would get rid of what’s known as the step-up in basis to tax the unrealized gains of certain estates at death.
Step-up in basis refers to the way the value of an asset is readjusted for tax purposes upon inheritance.
“Deathbed marriages” between couples where a suitor (often a much younger one) marries someone with a short life expectancy due to age or terminal illness are usually looked upon with suspicion. However, not every deathbed marriage is an insidious case of an opportunistic con artist trying to get his or her clutches into an elderly … Read more
Let’s say you’ve known for years that you are inheriting your father’s home when he dies.
Hopefully, you also know that he has a will that indicates clearly that the house will go to you.
Taxpayers making large gifts no longer have to worry about big federal estate taxes coming back to bite them years from now. However, the State of Illinois does take into account large gifts (more than $15,000 per person per year under current laws in 2020) when assessing the Illinois estate tax payable at death on assets in excess of $4,000,000 that pass to children or another non-spouse beneficiary.
Imagine your grandfather left a portion of his estate to his sister, but Great Aunt Irma has been gone for years. In order to probate his will or other legal documents, you may need to find Irma’s date of death. Where do you start?
When you hold an IRA, those funds can be distributed to the person you name as beneficiary or to an inheritance trust. Before you name a trust as the beneficiary of your IRA, however, consider the pros and cons.
When celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain died, his will contained a directive leaving his frequent flyer miles to his estranged wife to “dispose of in accordance to what she believes to be his wishes.”
Families face a variety of estate planning challenges, and family drama may be chief among them. In fact, 44 percent of planning professionals say family conflict is the biggest threat to estate planning this year, followed by tax reform (25 percent) and market volatility (12 percent), according to a recent survey.
When a person dies “intestate,” that means they’ve passed away without having made a will. If that happens, their property is doled out to surviving family members according to that state’s “intestate succession law.” This means the state is essentially creating a will for the person according to its idea of how most people would set one up, typically with a surviving spouse first in line, followed by kids, grandkids, parents, siblings and so forth.
A declaration of trust (also known as a “living trust” or “revocable living trust”) is an agreement you make with yourself. You can amend or revoke your living trust any time while you are competent. It is a “see-though” document (an “ignored entity” and not considered as separate from you) for income tax purposes and does not require admin- istration by a professional trustee, a taxpayer identification number or other trust formalities during your lifetime.
Basically, you can