Protecting
Your Legacy
The national budget plan recently proposed by President Obama may remind estate owners in Florida that "permanence" isn't necessarily permanent. At the beginning of this year, a tax exemption for estates of $5 million or less was put in place, with legislators and the...
If you own a diamond, you might be interested in the history of the gem - especially if cost 40 million dollars. However, a 34-carat pink "Princie" diamond, which was recently auctioned off for a whopping $39,323,750, has a disputed history, which is creating legal...
Say you want to do what most estate planners in Florida want to do: leave your assets to your chosen heirs and beneficiaries with as little tax liability and probate friction as possible. Unfortunately, what happens in many cases is that unforeseen incidents in...
It's no secret that, as people get older, they tend to become more vulnerable to scams that could threaten the assets the elderly person has worked so hard to accumulate. Undue influence is the legal term for wrongfully persuading or otherwise tricking a person into...
A bill recently passed by a Florida Senate committee would give unmarried couples, including gay couples, the right to register as domestic partners. In terms of estate planning, the bill, if eventually signed into law, could have a major effect on unmarried couples'...
Last year, the whirlwind of debate about the fiscal cliff and possible changes to federal tax law led some estate owners in Orlando to make some quick adjustments to limit tax liability. Many people with significant assets made lifetime gifts and created trusts to...
For people with assets to protect, planning out a method to transfer those assets after death is vital to prevent unnecessary devaluation and ensuring that the assets are given to the proper heirs. Creating a last will and testament is one method of making sure that...
Setting up a trust allows a person to retain a great deal of control over the transfer of assets to designated heirs. When setting up trusts, however, it's important that the trust maker provide some direction for how the assets will be administered. Unless an...
The distribution of assets to an estate's heirs is the primary purpose of estate administration. Estate planning should also include asset protection, which involves preventing these assets from being used in ways the estate's owner did not intend. Readers in Orlando...
Legal instruments such as trusts and wills specify the distribution of someone's personal property to the estate's beneficiaries. Trust administration is typically an orderly process when it is handled properly. The following story shows how trust administration can...