New & Noteworthy Articles

Estate Planning is not only about what happens if you die. It’s also about planning for what happens if you are incapacitated. That is, what happens if due to a stroke, serious injury or illness you are unable to make decisions for yourself?

Most of my clients have a Revocable Living Trust as the centerpiece of their estate plan. For many of them, a major reason they created the trust may have been the significant estate tax benefits it provided. But as you may have heard, recent tax law changes have essentially eliminated the danger of an estate tax for more than 99% of us. Thus, for most of my clients the Living Trust no longer provides any estate tax benefits. So it is reasonable for folks to wonder if their Living Trust now serves any beneficial purpose and to ask: “Do I still need a Living Trust?”

There’s a lot more to an estate plan than the legal documents – the Will, Trust and Powers of Attorney. In fact, there are other things that are even more

So, you have succeeded in putting your estate plan together – you have your Will, Trust, Powers of Attorney, and Medical Directives in place. The beneficiary designations for your life insurance policies and retirement accounts are in place. You review your estate plan periodically to make sure it continues to reflect your wishes and accomplish your goals. All the legal documents necessary to implement your estate plan are complete. But there is one further step you can take to make things easier for your loved ones if you die – prepare them for the eventuality.

Recent changes in both federal and Maryland State law have significantly reduced the threat of so-called “death taxes.” The federal estate tax only kicks in on estates over $5.4 million, and a married couple can combine both their exemptions and protect almost $11 million from any federal estate tax. The Maryland estate tax threshold is $2 million this year and will increase by $1 million each of the next two years and then be fixed at the federal amount. Consequently, tax avoidance is much less a motivating factor for people to do estate planning. But does that mean that you don’t need to do any estate planning? Not at all.

Over the past 10-20 years, Living Trusts have become the estate planning vehicle of choice for many people. Such revocable trusts are frequently recommended by estate planning attorneys, financial advisors and CPAs.

Based on my 35 years of assisting clients with their estate planning, and cleaning up messes left behind by those who died without having properly planned for their families, I have gathered together what I consider to be the most important lessons and advice that I can share. My hope is that by sharing this essential information, more families can be spared the difficulties that can otherwise be avoided by proper planning.

Parents of children with disabilities and special needs face unique challenges in providing for the day-to-day needs of their loved ones. When their thoughts turn to the issues that would arise if the parents were no longer around, the challenges become perhaps even more daunting. Consequently, estate planning for parents of special needs children requires much thought and preparation.