By now, you have likely heard about the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE Act) and the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023). These pieces of legislation were created to encourage Americans to save for retirement and provide additional rules about...
Category: IRA
Addiction and Your Estate Plan
Life is full of contingencies. While some outcomes are relatively certain, other events are more difficult to predict. This uncertainty can create estate planning challenges. Because life changes quickly and sometimes unexpectedly, your estate plan needs to be flexible.
You can make changes to your estate plan when you...
Investment, Insurance, Annuity, and Retirement Planning Considerations
If your clients choose to use a Standalone Retirement Trust (SRT) to provide asset protection benefits for their beneficiaries, the tax-related asset allocation strategy would be essentially the same as without an SRT, with one small exception.
To help minimize additional tax consequences, consider skewing your investment plan toward:
Warning: Don’t Let Creditors Inherit from You
Shocking to most people, the retirement account you leave for your spouse can be seized in a divorce, lawsuit, or bankruptcy.
3 Options Available To Surviving Spouses
When your surviving spouse inherits your IRA, he or she generally has three options:
Cash out the inherited IRA and pay the income tax.
WARNING! The...
How Does an IRA Fit Into Your Estate Plan?
When you think of IRAs, you probably think of retirement. But what happens to your IRA money after you’re gone? The answer depends on how you go about creating your estate plan and selecting beneficiaries, and you might be surprised to find out that your money could end up with...
U.S. Supreme Court Rules Inherited IRAs are Not Protected from Creditors
On June 12, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court—in a unanimous decision—ruled that Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) inherited by anyone other than a spouse are not retirement funds and therefore are not protected from the beneficiary’s creditors in bankruptcy.
The reasoning is, because the beneficiary cannot make additional contributions or delay distributions until retirement, it...
Caution: Creditors Now Have Easy Access to Inherited IRAs
Do you have IRAs or other retirement accounts that you plan to leave to your loved ones? If so, proceed with caution. Most people don’t know the law has changed: inherited retirement accounts no longer have asset protection, meaning they can be seized by strangers.
How Can Inherited IRAs Be Protected? Enter the...
Estate Planning Mistakes Regarding Individual Retirement Accounts
For many people, retirement savings accounts are among the largest assets they have to bequeath to their children and grandchildren in their estate plans. Sadly, without professional and personally tailored advice about how best to include IRAs in one’s estate plan, there may be a failure to take advantage of techniques that will maximize...
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