Avoid Probate with LA Probate Law
When you want to pass your estate on to your heirs, you would like to pass to them as much of it as possible. Without any plans, you can be sure that a lot of your assets will be removed to pay for estate taxes. Unless specially designated, anything else will go to your estate, and everything in it is going to be taxed. By using carefully designed estate planning tools, you can avoid unnecessary loss to taxes and give more of your estate to your loved ones. There are many tools available to enable you to bypass putting your estate through probate, and it will certainly be worth it – especially if you have a larger estate. Another advantage that estate planning can give you is that it can lower your current taxes. Also, these instruments can be made to work with many situations, enabling you to adjust them to your precise needs for present day benefits, and as a possible way to ensure that it is put into the hands of your heirs – when you are ready for it. LA Probate Law can help you customize your estate planning needs.
Avoid Possible Problems with Probate
In order to avoid probate effectively, you must make sure that all the documents creating your instruments are sound. The only way to do this is to have an attorney from LA Probate Law help you create those documents, or at least look them over to ensure everything is worded correctly and that everything is there that should be. Also, problems may occur because things are not as clear as they need to be. Unfortunately, many of these tools are negated for any of these reasons, including Wills, and the result is that your assets are treated as though you never had a Will or any other tool in place. The result, as you can imagine, is that all of your assets that are under rejected documents go into your estate, and you will need to pay estate taxes on all of it. You can avoid the pain that your relatives will feel if this happens simply by making sure that it is correct in the first place by seeing a qualified estate planning lawyer at LA Probate Law. Another reason that these documents may be rejected is because they might not be state specific. This can cause problems and the result is going to be the same – rejected documents – and heavy and unnecessary taxes.
Establish a Trust to Avoid Estate Taxes
One very powerful way to ensure that your assets are passed on to your heirs without taxes and without probate is to create a trust. There are many forms of trusts, and they each have a lot of flexibility that will enable you to customize it to handle the assets in it just about any way you want. Scott Schomer at LA Probate Law can help you select the perfect tool for your goals. Assets in most trusts, except possibly a living trust, are not subject to estate taxes and they also escape probate. Plus you can control the assets and have them distributed in a manner suitable to your plans. A spendthrift trust, for instance, doles out money directly to creditors and to pay bills, and does not put money into the hand of the individual. This would be ideal for those heirs who do not know the value of money, are irresponsible, or who are addicted to some substance. A trust to take care of your children can also be created. This is generally called a family pot trust if one trust is going to provide for all of them. Money can be given out of it to maintain the child’s needs, or pay for education, or for any other special needs that might arise. Other trusts exist that can be applied to protect an estate from children of a second marriage, a spouse not from this country, a trust created by a life insurance policy, and many more.
Create a Trust Separately for Best Results
Although a trust can be created directly from a will, this is not at all recommended. The main reason is that this does not protect the assets under the new trust from going into probate first. So that means that your assets will be smaller and it may take a couple of years or more to go through the probate process. If you are planning to provide for your family with these funds, it is not going to happen and separate money will need to be available to meet their needs during that time, funeral costs, and property taxes. It really is better if you let LA Probate Law help you set up a regular trust that will protect your assets from probate and still be able to meet your estate planning objectives.
Learn about the Benefits of Gift-Giving
Giving is another great way to enable your assets to avoid probate. It also lets you put your assets right where you want them – into the hands of your heirs. Through gift-giving, you can reduce your annual income, which means fewer income taxes, and your gift is tax-free to the recipient. There is, however, a maximum amount that you can give to an individual, which is currently $12,000 a year, although you can give gifts of this size to many different people. In addition, both you and your spouse can give gifts of this size to the same person – year after year if you want. Be sure to consult with LA Probate Law in order to learn more ways to keep your assets out of probate.
Avoid Probate with LA Probate Law
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