Death

Asking someone to serve as your fiduciary (trustee of your trust or personal representative or executor under your last will and testament) is not something that you should take lightly. Serving as a fiduciary is a heavy responsibility that requires significant time and effort. If you plan to nominate a family member or friend to serve in one or both of these roles, you will need to consider whether you should authorize them to be compensated from the trust or estate for the services they provide to the trust beneficiaries or heirs of the estate.

In today’s digital age, many people have a library of digital assets that may include items such as books, music, and movies. One of the perceived benefits of owning these digital items is having a convenient way to access your favorite media indefinitely with just a few mouse clicks. However, is it as simple as it seems? How do you own what you cannot touch? And if you cannot handle it, how do you pass it on? For those who own digital assets such as digital movies, these questions are at the heart of a new and interesting paradigm.

Estate planning attorneys frequently hear from their clients, “I’d like to leave something to my grandchildren. What’s the best way to do that?”

Naturally, grandparents love their grandchildren and want them to succeed in life. And when grandparents are in the twilight of their lives, their hearts often turn to the younger generation with a desire to give them whatever advantages they can, especially if they were unable to give their own children those same advantages when their children were younger.

This year has been unprecedented from a political perspective in many ways. President Joe Biden stepped into office facing huge obstacles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, an economy battered by the pandemic, a crumbling national infrastructure in dire need of repair, an ongoing immigration crisis at our southern border, and deep political and social divisions in this country, among other challenges.

Do you know that, according to the National Association of Home Builders, May is National Home Remodeling Month? Many people associate spring with cleaning out the old, brushing off the dirt accumulated from the long winter, and starting projects around the house that have been neglected for far too long.

Perhaps, however, your home is fine as is and you need a remodeling project for something other than your home. Estate planning is one area that often goes unexamined and neglected. Is it time to remodel your estate plan? If so, is that something that you can (or should) do on your own?

Although spouses receive special treatment when inheriting a retirement account such as an IRA (the ability to roll over the account into a personal retirement account and to stretch the distributions over their lifetime), the retirement account you leave for your spouse can still be seized in a divorce, a lawsuit, or a bankruptcy proceeding.

Three 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 cashed-out IRA will not have creditor protection and accelerates taxation. Once your spouse cashes out the account, he or she may use the money in any way. In addition, if your spouse dies before all the money has been spent, he or she can leave the money to anyone (even a mere acquaintance who was unknown to you).

• Maintain the IRA as an inherited IRA

  Warning! The inherited IRA will not have creditor protection.
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