If you fail to create an estate plan, your state’s laws will determine who will inherit your assets and if you have minor children, the court will appoint a guardian to raise your children. The state’s laws may not be what you had in mind for your legacy. However, this happens if you fail to have an estate plan, as described in the article “AVOID THESE (estate planning) MISTAKES!” from Westchester & Fairfield County Business Journals.

Failing to have a plan or review your estate plan regularly. Failing to have a plan is the most common mistake Americans make. Unfortunately, less than half of all U.S. adults have estate planning documents in place, and only 36 percent of parents with minor children have end-of-life plans. You may feel estate planning is optional. However, everyone over 18 should have a plan.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. However, a simple will prepared by an experienced estate planning attorney indicating who should receive your assets upon death and advance directives indicating who will handle medical (health care proxy) decisions and financial power of attorney decisions in case of incapacity is a good start. Once your plan is in place, reviewing it every three to five years is a good idea.

Thinking that a trust will make things too complicated or neglecting to fund a trust. Revocable and/or irrevocable trusts are excellent ways to avoid probate, the surrogate court’s process to validate a will and executor and specify how funds will be distributed to beneficiaries. Using a revocable trust and properly funding can eliminate the need for some or all of your estate to pass through probate, depending on how the trust is structured.

Relying too heavily on beneficiary designations. Far too many people think they can avoid having an estate plan by depending on beneficiary designations on all assets. For example, let’s say you have an investment account in your name alone, with your spouse and children as beneficiaries. From a tax planning perspective, you may lose tax planning opportunities if funds are passed directly to a beneficiary spouse. If a beneficiary is a minor and receives the assets, the court must appoint a guardian. Those funds would then be held in control of the court until the minor beneficiary reaches the age of majority. A trust for a minor child is one way to solve this problem.

If a named beneficiary dies before you without a secondary or surviving beneficiary, the account will become part of the probate estate. If you have received Medicaid benefits, whether home care or nursing home care, the asset will be subject to any claims made by Medicaid or creditors.

Using online templates and forms. Estate planning attorneys devote a fair amount of time to fixing the mistakes made by people downloading online forms. They may be inexpensive initially. However, mistakes and/or omissions can’t be corrected if an individual becomes incapacitated or deceased. In addition, when the forms don’t comply with state-specific laws, they may become invalid.

Keeping estate plans and wishes a secret. If family members or trusted friends don’t know you have an estate plan or don’t know where documents are located, it makes their tasks very difficult. The person you name as your health care power of attorney, for instance, needs to know where all of your advance directives are located and be able to access them in the event you become incapacitated. Similarly, your executor needs to know where wills and trust documents can be found. Equally important is discussing your wishes for burial, funeral and other arrangements.

Having a plan for incapacity and death is a gift to those you love, ensuring they know what to do, sparing them from a frantic search for time-sensitive documents and alleviating them from guessing what you would have wanted.

Reference: Westchester & Fairfield County Business Journals (March 16, 2023) “AVOID THESE (estate planning) MISTAKES!”

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys!

Sims & Campbell, LLC– Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

Estate planning addresses many issues, from who inherits your property or handles your finances to who takes care of you if you’re incapacitated to who manages funds for a disabled child. Unfortunately, there are many myths around estate planning, as explained in the recent article “Debunking the Top 10 estate planning myths” from Insurance News Net.

Only wealthy people need estate planning. This is easily the biggest myth of estate planning. Estate planning addresses planning for incapacity and taking care of your legal and financial affairs if you can’t. It also includes planning for end-of-life care and delineating what medical procedures you want and don’t want. Estate planning also creates a plan for families with minor children, if something should happen to parents.

Having a will means avoiding probate. Probate is the court process where the court reviews your will, establishes its validity and allows your executor to administer the estate. If your goal is minimizing or avoiding probate, talk with an estate planning attorney about retitling assets and creating trusts.

You need a trust to avoid probate. A trust is only one way to avoid probate. You could consider titling assets as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, although there are risks involved in doing so. Depending on your state of residence, you might also consider various transfer-on-death arrangements. Assets with beneficiary designations, like IRAs, 401(k)s, annuities, and other financial accounts, pass directly to beneficiaries.  You might also give away assets while you are living.

Putting a house in joint and survivorship ownership with an adult child will avoid probate. You may avoid probate. However, you create tremendous risk with this move. If your adult child becomes a half-owner, you’ll need their okay—and their spouse’s approval, too—to sell the house. You won’t qualify for the tax-free sale of your personal residence on half of the sale proceeds, unless your child also qualifies. If your child has financial problems or undergoes a divorce, their half ownership could be attached by creditors or be owned by an ex-spouse.

My will says who will inherit my IRA. The beneficiary designation on IRAs, life insurance and retirement accounts, and any account with a beneficiary designation overrides whatever your will says. The will does not control annuities, payable on death accounts, or transfer on death accounts and affidavits. You should check these forms periodically to ensure that the funds go where you want them to go.

I don’t need a will if my beneficiary forms are correct. However, you still need a will. For example, if a child dies before you, what happens to the assets if they were the beneficiaries? What happens to assets if a beneficiary is not of legal age and cannot inherit the money directly? Who makes decisions if there are multiple children and real estate decisions that need to be made? What if an adult child has a debt problem? Who will pay your final expenses? These are just a few issues that are addressed by wills.

A revocable trust will protect assets if I enter a nursing home. Totally wrong. Medicaid planning usually involves an Irrevocable Trust to protect assets. Revocable trusts will not make you eligible for nursing home care.

Trusts avoid probate. Assets in a trust don’t go through probate. However, it is only if the trust is funded. Assets must be immediately placed in the trust, usually through re-titling, or postmortem through beneficiary designations. Otherwise, the assets go through probate.

If my will says, “per stirpes,” my grandchildren will inherit assets if my adult children die first. This oversimplification of a complex issue is typical of estate planning myths. Grandchildren only inherit assets if the adult children die before the grandparent. If you want your grandchildren to inherit assets, you need a “bloodline” trust. An estate planning attorney will help you accomplish this.

I only need a will and a trust for my estate plan. This is another big mistake. An estate plan includes documents for incapacity and end-of-life, including Power of Attorney, Health Care Power of Attorney, Advanced Directives and a Living Will Declaration.

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys.

Reference: Insurance News Net (March 15, 2023) “Debunking the Top 10 estate planning myths”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

Transfer on-Death (TOD) and Payable-on-Death (POD) designations on financial accounts appear to be a simple way to avoid probate. However, they can still derail an estate plan if not coordinated with the overall plan, says a recent article from mondaq, “Transfer-on-Death Designations: A Word of Warning.”

Using a TOD or POD benefits the beneficiary and the account administrator, since both avoid unnecessary delays and court oversight of probate. In addition, designating a beneficiary on a TOD/POD account is usually fairly straightforward. Many financial institutions ask account owners to name a beneficiary whenever a new account is opened. However, the potential for undoing an estate plan can happen in several ways.

TOD/POD designations remove assets from the probate estate. If family members or trusts are included in an estate plan, but the TOD/POD designations direct most of the decedent’s assets to beneficiaries, the provisions of the estate plan may not be implemented. However, when thoughtfully prepared in tandem with the rest of the estate plan with an estate planning attorney, TOD/POD can be used effectively.

TOD/POD designations impact tax planning. For example, when an estate plan includes sophisticated tax planning, such as credit shelter trusts, marital trusts, or generation-skipping transfer (GST) trusts, a TOD/POD designation could prevent the implementation of these strategies.

If an estate plan provides for the creation of a GST trust, but the decedent’s financial account has a TOD/POD naming individuals, the assets will not pass to the intended trust under the terms of the estate plan. In addition to contradicting the estate plan, such a mistake can lead to unused tax exemptions.

TOD/POD designations can create liquidity problems in an estate. For example, suppose all or substantially all of an individual’s financial accounts pass by TOD/POD, leaving only illiquid assets, such as real estate or closely held business interests in the estate. In that case, the estate may not have enough cash to pay estate expenses or federal or estate taxes. If this occurs, the executor may need to recover necessary funds from the beneficiaries of TOD/POD accounts.

TOD/POD designations can undermine changes made to an estate plan. During the course of life, people’s circumstances and relationships change. It is easy to forget to update TOD/POD designations, especially if one’s estate planning attorney is not informed of assets being titled this way. An inadvertent omission increases the risk that a person’s wishes will not be fulfilled upon death.

Whenever considering putting a TOD/POD on a financial account, you must consider the impact doing so will have on your overall estate plan. Therefore, be sure to coordinate any such move with your estate planning attorney to be sure you are not undoing all the excellent planning that has been done to achieve your wishes.

Reference: mondaq (March 15, 2023) “Transfer-on-Death Designations: A Word of Warning”

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys

Sims & Campbell, LLC- Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

A will might be enough planning for simple situations. However, most people’s lives aren’t so simple anymore. You may want to consider a trust if you have a large estate, a second marriage, heirs with problems, children with special needs or charitable goals. The recent article, “Do I Need a Trust?” from Ag Web explains how this estate planning tool works.

Whether or not you need a trust is about money. However, it’s also about control, asset protection and about family relationships, especially for a family business, whether it is a farm, ranch, or privately held company.

First, let’s define a trust. A trust is a set of instructions for managing a legal entity owning the trust separate and apart from the individual. You could think of it as a mini corporation, a separate legal entity that owns property.

Most trusts are either revocable living trusts, irrevocable living trusts, or testamentary trusts. However, there’s more, mostly described by acronyms: CRAT, CRUT, GRIT, GRAT, IDGT, SLAT, ILIT, among others.

The basic trust is the revocable living trust. It can be controlled by the grantor and does not require a separate tax return. Upon the death of the grantor, it becomes irrevocable, and assets are transferred per its terms to beneficiaries.

Farmers and family business owners can benefit from a trust for two reasons:

• If assets are owned by the trust at death, they do not go through probate, keeping the assets and their transfer private.
• Administration of this trust moves at a faster pace than if the assets were to be included in the probate estate.

Once the trust is created, it’s very important to fund the trust. This is done by retitling assets in the proper name, which an estate planning attorney can help with. Everything needs to be retitled, but only once. If you need to make changes, depending upon the changes wished, you likely will only need to change the trust documents and not go through the retitling process again.

Trusts can be very simple, or they can be very sophisticated. It depends upon what the objectives are, the value of the assets being protected, the complexity of the business and the family dynamics.

As you go through the estate planning process, stay focused on big-picture goals, and consider the desired final results. Do you want to protect your business, so it passes easily from one generation to the next, or are you protecting assets from a litigious family member? These are all subjects to review in depth with an experienced estate planning attorney.

Reference: Ag Web (March 14, 2023) “Do I Need a Trust?”

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys

Sims & Campbell, LLC- Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

The Dallas Morning News’ recent article entitled “Owning your trust: Avoid these five common trust mistakes” explains these big mistakes frequently made with trusts.

Mistake 1: Failing to fund the trust. This involves transferring assets into the trust and managing assets with the trustee.   It also makes the assets subject to the trust’s terms. A trust without assets is a worthless piece of paper.

Mistake 2: Placing your homestead into the trust. For example, a homestead designation in Texas carries several benefits, like creditor protection, tax exemptions and bankruptcy protection. Those are lost when you put your homestead into a trust, unless it is a “qualifying trust.” If your homestead has a mortgage, transferring it into a trust may cause a default. A mortgage company may also refuse to refinance an existing mortgage or extend new financing on a homestead that is in a trust.

Mistake 3: Funding the trust with a vacation home. This can be a headache for the trust’s beneficiaries. Most of us don’t leave enough money in the trust to maintain the home in perpetuity. Your children and their spouses will fight over holiday usage. It ends up being an expensive albatross. If you decide to keep the property in the family, ask an experienced estate planning attorney about a family limited partnership or an LLC. However, before you take this step, ask your children if they want to keep it.

Mistake 4: Failing to understand the trust document. While most trusts are long, boring and contain provisions that make absolutely no sense to anyone but the IRS, if you rely on a trust for your financial future and legacy, you must know what it says and does.

Mistake 5: Failing to review the trust annually. A lot can change in a year, like assets, financial conditions, births, deaths, divorces, marriages, etc. These may require changes to your trust.

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys.

Reference: Dallas Morning News (March 12, 2023) “Owning your trust: Avoid these five common trust mistakes”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

A qualified disability trust, or QDisT, qualifies for tax exemptions and applies to most trusts created for an individual with special needs. In most cases, explains a recent article from Investopedia, “Qualified Disability Trust: Meaning and Tax Requirements,” the person receiving income from the trust must pay income tax. However, in 2003, the IRS added a section allowing some disability trusts to reduce this tax liability. This is another example of why reviewing estate plans every few years is important.

Trusts need to meet several requirements to be considered qualified disability trusts for tax purposes. However, if a special needs trust meets these criteria, it could save a lot in taxes.

Most special needs trusts already meet the requirement to be treated as qualified disability trusts and can be reported as such at tax time. For 2022 tax year, the tax exemption for a QDisT is $4,400. For tax year 2023, the amount will increase to $4,700. Income from a QDisT is reported on IRS Form 1041, using an EIN, while distributions to the beneficiary will be taxed on their own 1040 form.

The best way to fully understand a QDisT is through an example. Let’s say a child is diagnosed with a disability, and their grandparents contribute $500,000 to an irrevocable special need’s trust the child’s parents have established for the child’s benefit. The trust generates $25,000 in annual income, and $10,000 is used annually for expenses from the child’s care and other needs.

Who pays the income tax bill on the trust’s gains? There are a few options.

The parents could include income from the trust as part of their taxes. This would be “on top” of their earned income, so they will pay their marginal tax on the $25,000 generated from the trust—paying $8,000 or more.

Alternatively, trust income spent for the child’s benefit can be taxed to the child—$10,000, as listed above. This would leave $15,000. However, this must be taxed to the trust. Trust income tax brackets are high and increase steeply. Paying this way could lead to higher taxes than if the parents paid the tax.

The QDisT was designed to alleviate this problem. QDisTs are entitled to the same exemption allowed to all individual taxpayers when filing a tax return. In 2012, for instance, the personal tax exemption was $3,800, so the first $3,800 of income from QDisTs wasn’t taxed.

The deduction for personal exemptions is suspended for tax years 2018 to 2025 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, except the same law said that in any year there isn’t a personal exemption, the exemption will be allowed for a QDisT.

For tax year 2022, $4,400 is the indexed tax exemption amount for these trusts, including most special needs trusts. For tax year 2023, the amount will increase to $4,700.

To be reported as a qualified disability trust, specific requirements must be met:

• The trust must be irrevocable.
• The trust must be established for the sole benefit of the disabled beneficiary.
• The disabled beneficiary must be under age 65 when the trust is established.
• The beneficiary must have a disability included in the definition of disabled under the Social Security Act.
• The trust must be a third-party trust, meaning all funding must come from someone other than the disabled beneficiary.

An experienced estate planning attorney can help set up a special needs trust to meet the criteria for a QDisT and enjoy the tax benefits the statute grants.

Contact us to review your estate plan with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys.

Reference: Investopedia (March 4, 2023) “Qualified Disability Trust: Meaning and Tax Requirements”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys