Wealth Planning Blog

As we progress throughout our lives, we seek meaning in our family, social, religious and work relationships. “The future must be seen in terms of what a person can do to contribute something, to make something better, to make it go where he believes with all his being it ought to go.” - Frederick R. Kappel. When we do succeed in finding religious, charitable or social meaning in our lives, one avenue of honoring this can be to make a financial gift to an organization or institution which develops, reflects, or embodies this meaning in our lives.

Whether you are an expert in probate and have dealt with it on multiple occasions or a rookie, we can all agree on one thing: probate kind of sucks and should be and can be avoided. Let’s start with the basics: What is probate? Probate is a Court-guided process whereby a deceased individual’s financial affairs are wrapped up and the Court determines who the proper beneficiaries are of the deceased individual’s estate. The words “court-guided process” should automatically lead you to the accurate assumption that probate can be expensive both in time and money.

Over the years, estate and gift taxation has often been a see-saw of policy and tax rate changes. As administrations come and go, it seems so do the tax rates on estates and gifts. From 1 million to 5 million to unlimited millions, the administrations lead our planning to be based on a “best guess” of what’s coming next. Then, last year we finally got a “permanent law” that indexed the rates for inflation but otherwise left them predictable. Or, so some of us thought. 

Children bring a lot of joy to a parent’s life, but also come with a great amount of responsibility and stress. Prior to children, my hardest decision was whether or not to cook dinner or eat out with friends. That decision is a cake walk compared to the decisions I now make as a parent: daycare or nanny, bottles or sippy cups, feeding choices, public school or private school, sleeping habits, immunizations, etc.

Hello, and welcome back to Part 2 of our “keeping real estate out of probate” series. Did everyone have a nice Valentine’s Day? We actually celebrated this Valentine’s Day as a big group with family, and I was utterly amazed at how excited the kids were about Valentine’s Day. I swear my niece and nephew were more excited about their candy and stuffed animals than they were about all the toys on Christmas.