Alpharetta Probate Law Blog

Asset protection, like Medicaid planning, is an important aspect of estate planning. In truth, Medicaid planning is a form of asset protection, which includes a number of other considerations like tax minimization, planning for special needs children, and ensuring avoidance of costly will contests.

One area where asset protection should be especially considered is with respect to one's home. For many families, the family home is the largest asset. But, as a recent Reuters article points out, many homeowners choose not to take steps to protect their homes, such as setting up trusts and limited liability companies.

In our last post, we began speaking about the ways religious faith can affect estate planning, for better or for worse. Obviously, families are complicated, and when it comes to religious faith, not everybody shares the same views. Allowing one's faith to influence one's estate planning may best be approached in conjunction with the goal of maintaining family harmony. Disinheriting an heir for not sharing one's religious faith may not be the best approach, at least not for every family.

There are a variety of positive ways one can incorporate one's religious faith into estate planning . Living wills and health care proxies are one area that should be carefully considered, both with respect to concrete forms of care and medical decision-making for unexpected situations. One should select a health care proxy that fully understands and shares one's ethical and religious understanding of health care.

In our last post, we began speaking about major mistakes people sometimes make in their estate planning. We've already mentioned several mistakes-failure to plan, doing estate planning without professional help, and failing to review one's beneficiary designations. In this post, we'll look at several other specific mistakes sometimes made in estate plans.

Another mistake that sometimes comes up is the failure to plan for the gift and estate tax consequences of life insurance. Life insurance policies which are owned by the insured at death are included in the insured's estate, and are subject to estate and gift taxes. But bu transferring all "incidence of ownership" of such policies during their lifetime, the insured can remove the policies out of their estate and avoid taxes. It is important to realize, though, that there are a variety of ways to structure ownership and control of a life insurance policy, and one should think through this issue carefully before making a fully informed decision.

Financial planning and estate planning, while they do intersect, are slightly separate disciplines. In terms of financial planning, retirement planning is a foremost issue. Many worry about whether they will have enough money to last them through retirement. And that is a legitimate concern.

One way that financial planners approach this question is by determining how much money one can safely withdraw from their investments upon retirement. The term applicable to this question is "withdrawal rate," which refers to how much one can tap into investments without running out of money before death.