Smart Charitable Donation Strategies for Your Will

The assets that you work hard to acquire during your lifetime are very important to you. While you already have plans to leave charitable donations to your family and friends, you should also consider your favorite charity. You could arrange this by adding the company to your will, but that might not be the best strategy to use. Not only could money and property get stuck in probate, but there could be problems with getting your wishes carried out.

Thankfully, there are other strategies you can use to have a better outcome. According to what you need and what your goals are, the below approaches could work very well for you. Continue reading so that you find a way that both you and your charity can prevail.

Set Up a Charitable Donation Trust Endowment

Using a charitable trust endowment to share your part of your assets with the charity of your choice is very effective. A system called a charitable remainder trust, or CRT, is a great idea to consider. With this trust, you can retitle the assets so that the CRT owns them. At the time of your death, the assets are then allocated to the charity based on the instructions that you included in the documents for the trust.

Work With a Lawyer to Include Business Succession

When you decide to help a nonprofit or charity, you aren’t limited to monetary donations in your giving. You can pass on nearly any asset to your philanthropic interests. For example, this includes jewelry, vehicles, real estate, life insurance policy benefits, stock and even business partnerships. This means that while you are setting up your business succession planning, you can also add in your plans for charitable donations. But, to ensure this is correct, work with a business planning lawyer in Las Vegas. Then, you will have the security that comes with a lawyer experienced with business continuation and wills.

Three Surprising Assets That Are Taxable After Death

As the saying goes, there are only two certainties in life: death, and taxes. Because of this, people often plan how their estates are going to be distributed among their families. They will also plan out how they can lower the amount of taxes they are going to have to pay. However, with so much to look into, it can be easy to miss a few. Therefore, the following details three surprising assets that are taxable after death.

Trust Assets May Be Considered Taxable

Most parents who have the financial means will create a trust for their child for when they both pass on. This is done to protect not only the family fortune but also to make sure their child is taken care of, especially if they are underage. However, because this isn’t a purchase or gift, it can seem like it shouldn’t be taxed. Unfortunately, this is not true. According to trust administration lawyers in Las Vegas, a trust asset will often go into consideration and may be included in the gross estate if you have chosen to have specific rights over the trust.

Marital Deduction

When married couples decide to create a will, they will often leave a certain amount of money to them. Although the money isn’t taxable right away, it will be once the spouse has passed away (that’s if they haven’t gone through it all.) Now, no taxes on this only applies when your spouse is a U.S citizen. If you are married to a non-U.S. citizen, the money will be taxed as the IRS will be a concern that they will take the money back to their country of origin, thus depriving the United States of collecting its taxable share.

Gifts Even Given in Life Are Taxable After Death

When a person files for tax exemption, they will often be asked to provide the IRS with a certain number. Often, elderly parents will take this time to give their children a large amount of money to avoid death taxes but will keep the same number on their application. This, however, does not work. If you have filed for $20 million in tax exemptions and give $10 million to your children, then you no longer have $20 million worth of exemption. So when you eventually pass on, the first will be added to the tax calculation.

Conditional Trusts: What to know

You’ve worked hard all your life to gather your wealth, and understandably you want to make sure that anyone who receives it is going to be responsible enough to maintain the wealth. This is why so many seek to add a conditional trust to their inheritance before they pass. So, what exactly are conditional trusts? These are a set of rules that the recipient must follow in order to be eligible for your inheritance. However, there are certain things you need to know about these types of conditions.

Some Conditional Trusts Cannot Be Enforced

Perhaps the most common misconception regarding these types of trusts is that they have to be enforced for the recipient to qualify for the money. However, there are certain conditions that many courts won’t enforce. For example, if you state that your wife, who is about to inherit your estate, must smoke a pack of cigarettes each week, then the courts might rule that forcing someone to harm themselves is not enforceable by law. Now, that’s an extreme example, but you can see how easily a court can dismiss your wishes if they are not well-thought-out.

You Must Have a Back-up Plan Set

Not everything is going to go according to your plan, so you need to make sure that you have a back-up plan ready with your probate attorney in Las Vegas to ensure that your funds are properly managed if conditions aren’t met. For example, if your children don’t hold up their end of the bargain, such as finishing school, you can then have it written that the funds be distributed to charities or to another living family member.

Three Things to Consider When Renting to a Trust Funder

Trust funders often have a lot of money in their trust funds. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily make good tenants. Here are three tips that you should consider before renting to an applicant whose primary income source is a trust fund.

How Much They Get Monthly from the Trust Fund

One thing to keep in mind about trust funds is that the applicant doesn’t always have access to all the money at once. They’ll usually receive monthly payouts. You’ll need to make sure these monthly payouts, plus any other sources of income, can cover your requirements.

Who’s Paying the Taxes

Taxes must be paid on those monthly payments. If the trust fund is responsible for the taxes, great! It doesn’t affect how much the trust funder receives each month. However, if the applicant is responsible for the taxes, it will be deducted from the monthly amount they receive. This reduces the net amount of income they’re receiving which could affect their ability to meet the income requirement.

Check the Trust Funder Applicant’s Rental History

Don’t be blinded by the money. Just because they may greatly exceed your income requirements doesn’t mean that they’ll automatically make good tenants. You should check all their rental history and their references.

If you still have questions about renting to a trust funder, you can consult a trust administration lawyer in Las Vegas.

3 Steps to Protect Assets When You Retire

If you’ve set yourself up right, retirement will be as easy as a piece of cake. However, if you don’t take steps to protect assets you’ve worked so hard to acquire, your retirement might not be the cake walk you want. Here are three steps that can help you protect those hard-earned assets when you retire.

Whole Life Insurance Policy

Many people don’t think about this, but a whole life insurance policy is one of the most perfect ways to protect your investment. For one, you can count on it for cash and liquidity. You can also count on tax-free minimum rates of return that are guaranteed by contract. This is almost a guaranteed way to protect assets. A whole life insurance policy is the perfect emergency fund in retirement or a fund that you can leave to your grandchildren, donate to the charity of your choice, or basically flex however you want in retirement.

Think Beyond the Traditional

Traditional and Roth IRAs are great retirement tools, but they aren’t the only ones. You can use other types of interest-bearing accounts to save money and protect assets. Checking and savings accounts are great for this. You won’t have to worry about taxes later down the line and you’ll earn interest while keeping your money safe.

Pass on Assets to Protect Assets

There is no rule that you must wait until you’re a certain age to pass assets over to a relative. Once these assets have been passed legally and properly, they’ll no longer be at risk once you retire. You should pass them on well before you consider settling into a retirement home or nursing home.

The three steps above are just a few of many you can take to protect assets upon retiring. An estate planning lawyer in Las Vegas may be able to point you in the right direction, so you’ll have no worries during your golden years.