Taxes

Who knew Mark Zuckerberg would offer so many lessons on estate planning?

by Jen Santini June 4, 2012 Estate Planning 101

May 2012 was a big month for Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, with his company going public and his surprise wedding to longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg and Chan were able to pull off a very [...]

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Inherited Retirement Accounts Part II: Non-Spouse Beneficiary

by Jen Santini April 27, 2012 Estate Planning 101

We previously discussed the options available to a surviving spouse inheriting a qualified retirement account. This article will address the options available to a non-spouse beneficiary inheriting a qualified retirement account. Just for a brief [...]

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Inherited Retirement Accounts Part I: Spouse Beneficiary

by Jen Santini April 13, 2012 Estate Planning 101

There is often confusion about what to do when a beneficiary inherits a retirement account. The answer is… it depends. There are different factors to determine the best course of action, such as the beneficiary [...]

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Attorney Under the Weather? Tough Luck, says the IRS

by Steve Held April 11, 2012 Guest Articles

Although most of us would consider our estate planning attorney to be superhuman, the fact of the matter is that sometimes they are unable to perform their duties.  In a recent case, the district court [...]

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Disclaiming Property Part II: Minnesota Disclaimer

by Jen Santini February 24, 2012 Estate Planning 101

I previously wrote on how to disclaim property under federal law to avoid or minimize estate taxes. While estates may fall short of the federal estate tax exemption limit, currently set at $5 million, individuals [...]

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Termination of Ancient Endowments

by Matthew Getty February 20, 2012 Estate Planning 101

One of the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn is a decrease in the size of institutional endowments, just at the time when reliance on those funds may increase in order to offset a simultaneous [...]

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Disclaiming Property Part I: Federal Disclaimer

by Jen Santini February 7, 2012 Estate Planning 101

Jamie Held explained that the benefit of disclaimer planning is to utilize “…both spouses’ estate tax exemption amounts in order to minimize or eliminate estate tax on a couple’s accumulated wealth.” As we have mentioned [...]

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Unique Estate Planning Issues in Agricultural Communities

by Laurel Mohan January 16, 2012 Estate Planning 101

Everyone should have an estate plan. Estate planning attorneys say that a lot, and we mean it! But this is even more critical for farming families. There are many unique issues and problems that play [...]

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Portability & Gifting

by Jamie Held December 17, 2011 Estate Planning 101

I recently wrote about portability, specifically, what it is and how to elect it.  This post takes it one step further, discussing how portability and gifting interact.

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Tax Relief for Qualified Minnesota Businesses and Farms

by Scott Johnson December 9, 2011 Estate Planning 101

For those of you out there that are residents of Minnesota and owners of a small business or family farm, there is a relatively new law offering relief from the Minnesota estate tax.

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Paterno’s transfer to wife was for estate planning purposes.

by Maggie Green November 20, 2011 Estate Planning 101

When I heard about the scandal at Penn State, I never imagined that it would lead to an Epilawg article on estate planning.  But somehow, the topic of federal tax planning worked its way into [...]

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