Understanding Estate Planning and Living Trusts

Overview: The article defines the estate as something owned by an individual. The home, other real estate, bank accounts, investments, retirement benefits from the employer, IRAs, insurance policies, collectibles, and personal belongings. When one starts adding it up -- especially when he adds in the death benefits from the insurance policies – the person may find, like most people do, that one actually owns a lot more than he thinks. The necessity of Estate Planning is captured in this power-point presentation. Most people do estate planning because they want to control who will receive their assets after they die, and they want this to happen with the least amount going to legal fees and taxes. But estate planning is not just about what happens after a person dies. A good estate plan will also protect people at incapacity. There are really only these six basic ways to plan the estate: 1) Having a will, 2) Doing nothing, 3) Using joint ownership, 4) Making gifts, 5) Using beneficiary transfers, and 6) Having a living trust. The article tries to give an idea of how the trusts are developed and how it works. The determination of taxable estate is very interesting in this discussion.

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Format: HTML | Size: 4KB | Date: Jan 2003 | Pages: 47