Protect and Enhance Your Estate: Definitive Strategies for Estate and Wealth Planning 3/E

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Protect and Enhance Your Estate: Definitive Strategies for Estate and Wealth Planning 3/E

Protect and Enhance Your Estate: Definitive Strategies for Estate and Wealth Planning 3/E

Authors: Robert Esperti and Renno Peterson

Published: February 2012

eISBN: 9780071787901 0071787909 | ISBN: 9780071787895

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. What Is Estate Planning?: It’s More Than Money

2. Title: How Do You Own It?

3. Jointly Held Property: Common but Complicated

4. Disability: Living Longer Offers New Planning Challenges

5. No Estate Plan?: Big Brother Has One for You

6. Wills: What Are They?

7. More on Wills: They’re Not All They’re Cracked Up to Be

8. Probate: Red Tape That Can Be Avoided

9. The Federal Estate Tax: The Final Sting

10. The Unified System: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

11. The Gift Tax: The Manner of Giving is Worth More Than the Gift

12. The Marital Deduction: Federal Recognition of a Spouse’s Efforts

13. Community Property: Maverick Law in Maverick States

14. State Death Taxes: States Need Revenue Too

15. Step-Up in Basis at Death: It Almost Pays to Die

16. Trusts: The Estate Planner’s Golf Clubs

17. The Revocable Living Trust: The Foundation of Estate Planning

18. Funding a Revocable Living Trust: Placing All Your Eggs in One Basket

19. Trustees: Superagents

20. Giving Property to Minors: Young Ones Are Tough to Give To

21. Planning for Children: Beliefs and Caring Can Survive Death

22. Per Stirpes versus Per Capita: Serious Latin

23. Generation Skipping: Geometrically Increasing Your Estate

24. Disinheriting a Spouse: Spouses Have Rights Too

25. Planning for a Spouse: An Incredible Number of Choices

26. Planning for Unmarried Couples: Protecting the Rights of Both Parties

27. Life Insurance: Estate Planning Fuel

28. Life Insurance: What Kind of Fuel Do You Need?

29. Life Insurance: How Much Fuel Do You Need?

30. The Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust: Having Your Cake and Eating it Too

31. Some Estate Planning Solutions: Techniques and Gimmicks That Do Not Always Work

32. Freezing Techniques: Putting Your Estate in Cold Storage

33. Discounting the Value of Your Estate: Reduce Value—and Taxes—by Restructuring Your Assets

34. Protecting Your Assets: Safety from Unexpected Liability

35. Loans to Family Members: It’s Hard to Be Your Family’s Banker

36. Sales to Family Members: Caveat Emptor

37. Private Annuities and Self-Canceling Installment Notes: The Ultimate Gamble

38. Personal Residence Trusts: Give the House, but Not Your Home

39. Retirement Planning: Long Life Deserves Good Planning

40. Special Use Valuation: Keeping the Farm in the Family

41. Using Assets of a Corporation to Pay Death Costs: Trading Dollars for Stock

42. Giving It to Charity: Good Works Deserve Good Benefits

43. An Estate Planning Summary: Protecting and Enhancing Your Estate

Appendix A: Getting Organized

Appendix B: Federal Estate and Gift Tax Tables

Appendix C: Spouses Have Rights Too

Appendix D: Estate Planning History

Index