Join us next Thursday, September 6th for a special 60-minute teleconference with nationally renowned CPA, Robert S. Keebler, on the topic of Portability and the New Form 706. For more information and to register, click here. Last Friday, the Internal Revenue Service released a draft of the new Form 706. For the first time, the form addresses the issue of portability of a deceased spouse’s unused estate and gift tax exclusion amount by providing an option for the executor to opt out of electing portability of the unused portion. Under the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act…
How Will Health Care Ruling Impact Advisors?
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the health care overhaul could have a broad impact on wealthy investors’ wallets with a new 3.8% increase on investment income. The increase, which is one of the bill’s funding mechanisms, is set to take effect in January. “The top rate on long-term gains is 15%. Next year, we know it’s going to go up by at least 3.8%,” says Tim Steffen, director of financial planning at Robert W. Baird & Co. “For higher income individuals and couples, their investments just became more expensive.” That new rate, according to Steffen, will be imposed on…
Testamentary Planning & Administration for Blended Families
A prospective new client contacts you about working with him. Within minutes, you learn that he wants you to also work with his partner, and that they are unmarried with each having children from prior relationships as well as one of their own together. Do you experience a thrill of excitement at having such a complex and fascinating potential couple to work with, or does this scenario strike fear in your heart? If you’re like most of the estate planners we work with, fear is the first response, and, in most instances, the prospective client is afraid as well, but…
LISI.com – Practice Pointers on the Core Concern of Blended Family Estate Planning: Joint or Separate Representation
Reproduced with Permission by and Courtesy of Leimberg Information Services, Inc. (LISI). For information about how to subscribe to LISI, click here. “Statistics show that approximately 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and almost 75% of third marriages do as well. These figures loom large in the minds of couples with the “yours, mine and/or ours” scenarios in their step and blended families. There are pluses and minuses to couples sharing everything regarding their estate planning together, and when it comes to couples with blended families, the minuses can outweigh the pluses substantially. While there is great value in…
Practical Planner – Checklist: Capacity (Volume 7, Issue 2)
Martin “Marty” Shenkman, Esq., CPA, MBA is an estate planning attorney and Certified Public Accountant who authors a number of publications each month, including his monthly e-mail newsletter, “Practical Planner“. Below is the second installment from Marty’s March/April 2012 newsletter. To be added to Marty’s monthly e-mail distribution list, e-mail newsletter@shenkmanlaw.com. Summary: By 2030 it is estimated that 1/5th of all Americans will be age 65 or older. Age brings challenges, that are often compounded by more health challenges. These make confirming that you have adequate ability, called “testamentary capacity,” to sign a will more important. But even if you’re…
Practical Planner: 2012— ACT NOW! (Volume 7, Issue 2)
Martin “Marty” Shenkman, Esq., CPA, MBA is an estate planning attorney and Certified Public Accountant who authors a number of publications each month, including his monthly e-mail newsletter, “Practical Planner“. Below is the second installment from Marty’s March/April 2012 newsletter. To be added to Marty’s monthly e-mail distribution list, e-mail newsletter@shenkmanlaw.com. Summary: Unless you’re hiding under a rock, you’ve been bombarded with email newsletters, mailings and more from your CPA, investment adviser, the 100s of people who want to be your investment adviser and more, cajoling you to make gifts before the end of 2012. Well this article is one…
5 Important Steps to Update Estate Plans
The tumult of the current tax season is winding down, but advisors can provide a valuable additional service to their wealthy clients by encouraging them to closely review their estate plans to ensure these are up to date. Estate plans are valid at the time they are signed, but sometimes years or decades pass before they come into play and circumstances change: assets grow or retract, designated trustees die, family members have falling-outs. Keeping estate plans current is essential to protecting clients’ families and their assets, Blooma Stark, an attorney with Aronberg Goldgehn Davis & Garmisa, said in a telephone…
Tax Expert Marty Shenkman: Two Tax Mistakes to Avoid With Clients in 2012
Despite the uncertainty of where estate, income and capital gains rates will be this year, you still need to plan. Reposted from AdvisorOne.com | By Marlene Y. Satter, AdvisorOne Martin Shenkman of Shenkman Law in Paramus, N.J. doesn’t hesitate to tell it like it is about tax planning in 2012: “This is not a normal year,” he says. However, that’s no excuse for what he sees as two huge mistakes that advisors and their clients often make as they quiver with uncertainty over what Congress may or may not do this year regarding taxes. Those two mistakes? Acting like an…
How to Thrive in the Under $5 Million Estate Market
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Tax), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Tax and Probate Law I and many practitioners have over the years built successful practices on what I call the “middle market”, that is, estates valued anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million. This level of estate planning practice faces a number of challenges today unlike any we have had in the past. Our services have become commoditized into mass produced documents, with increasing low-priced competition from the internet, do-it-yourself packages, non-attorney paralegals and bargain-priced attorneys. Plus, with the new $5.12 million Federal Estate…
U.S. Treasury Announces President Obama’s 2013 Budget and Proposed Estate Tax Law Changes
A special thank you to Robert Keebler of Keebler & Associates, LLP for the heads up that the U.S Treasury just released its FY2013 Greenbook, which provides an explanation of the Administration’s revenue proposals for Fiscal Year 2013. The Administration’s FY2013 budget proposes tax policy to boost growth, create jobs and improve opportunity for the middle class. In particular, as estate planning professionals, we are all extremely interested to see what is going to happen with the current Federal Estate Tax Exemption Amount, which is set to revert back to $1 million in 2013. According to this bill, the estate…