Estate Planning

Adding an adult child to your house deed, or giving them the home outright, might seem like a smart thing to do. It usually isn’t.

Your estate plan is much more likely to be successful, when you recognize and avoid the most common mistakes and take some key actions that often are overlooked.

Should I terminate these trusts and just have my children as beneficiaries of my investment accounts and life insurance?

We see recurring confusion about what it means to be appointed with authority over money in a Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) for aging parents.

It’s generally a bad idea to name a trust as beneficiary of your IRA. The IRA usually loses the power of tax deferral, because it must be distributed faster than in other scenarios.

Traditional IRAs have been available to retirement savers who have earned income since 1974. That’s 23 years longer than Roth IRAs (introduced in 1997) have been on the scene. The big difference between these two types of individual retirement savings vehicles is when you pay federal (and possibly state) income tax on your savings.

What happens if a non-spouse beneficiary inherits an IRA account but dies before the money is put in her name. There were no contingent beneficiaries. Which estate would get the IRA?

Your estate plan is much more likely to be successful, when you recognize and avoid the most common mistakes and take some key actions that often are overlooked.

I know of someone who was joint account holder with his dad for many years, then later his dad then appointed him as power of attorney. How does that work? Is the son still a joint account holder?