New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog

More and more grandparents are now using some of the money that they have tucked away using retirement and estate planning to help their grandchildren pay for college. According to a study done by Sallie Mae, 17% of families in the United States relied on relatives to help pay for college. This percentage is expected to increase as more grandparents use their estate plans to help benefit their families.

However, it is important that grandparents should be smart about how they help their grandchildren pay for school because it can have major tax consequences for them and their loved ones if the correct steps are not taken.

Understanding Estate Planning Gift Taxes

Battles over estates can intensify underlying issues between siblings and ultimately tear families apart. However, there are ways to lessen the chances of infighting among your heirs before you pass on. Advance planning can drastically help minimize conflicts among your children, spouse, and other heirs.

Not Just About the Money

According to a prominent wealth management group, around $30 trillion of wealth will be passed to the younger generations over the next thirty to forty years. Roughly 70% of those families will lose a chunk of their inheritance, mostly due to estate battles.

Far too many entrepreneurs, despite their successes in business, have put far too little time into planning for the eventual sale of their business for retirement. In fact, more often than not business owners do not start planning the sale of the business until the day that they sit down with a potential buyer. Starting this late almost always means that money is left on the table, and it is far too late to make a meaningful difference in the money that you will be able to keep when you sell your business.

Talk to Estate Planning Attorneys

One of the most important people to speak with when planning the sale of your business is an estate planning attorney. After explaining the financials and structure of your business as well as a timeline for when you wish to sell, your estate planning attorney can review your tax situation and explain what your options are to save the most money in an estate plan.

When you hear about Medicare taxes, you probably do not also consider how it affects investments. However, these new taxes can impose higher costs both on wages and net invested income. If you are concerned about how the Medicare tax may affect your estate or retirement plan, speak with an experienced estate planning attorney today.

Medicare Tax and Payroll Income

Medicare tax on payroll income is 2.9%. It applies to all earned income, which includes payroll from your employer in addition to any tips. Half of the tax is paid by you, and the other half is paid by your employer. For high wage earners, Medicare tax imposes an additional 0.9% tax on individuals who make over $200,000, $250,000 for couples filing taxes together, or $125,000 for spouses filing separately. Your employer is required to withhold the 0.9% from your paycheck once you exceed the $200,000 limit.

A lot of people assume that estate planning is just for the old and the wealthy; however, that is not the case. As a Daily Finance article discusses, when you are in your thirties, planning for your eventual passing is not usually a top priority, but most estate planning experts agree that this is the best time to begin to create an estate plan that will protect you and your family in case the unexpected occurs.

Sometimes it can be even more important for people in their thirties to create an estate plan because they have just as much to lose, sometimes more, than their parents and elders. A lot of people entering this decade are settling down, getting married, buying their first home, and having children – all of which needs to be protected.

An estate planning attorney can help you start to draft your estate plan, and here are the basic documents that you should consider putting into place:

Prenuptial agreements, or prenups, are almost always associated with marriage and divorce; however, they can also be a powerful tool for estate planning. This type of agreement can be used to clarify the rights and responsibilities of both spouses if one suddenly passes away. A prenuptial agreement can be used in estate planning to reduce family in-fighting and other legal issues by predetermining what the spouse is entitled to in the estate.

Using a Prenup to Prevent Estate Nullification

Most prenuptial agreements are made when one or both spouses come into the marriage with significant assets, land, or wealth, if one or both spouses have been previously married, or if children from a previous relationship are involved. One of the biggest advantages to a prenup for the purposes of estate planning in these situations is that the agreement prevents the spouse from nullifying the existing estate plan.

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of never married Americans is at an all-time high. In 2012, almost twenty percent of all adults over the age of 25 had never been married, compared to only nine percent in the same age bracket back in 1960. The research center cites shifting public attitudes towards marriage as one of the top reasons why Americans are putting off marriage or never marrying at all. Half of all never married adults do not wish to ever walk down the aisle and are perfectly comfortable just remaining in a committed relationship.

But for a committed couple, there are estate planning benefits that come with marriage that you do not receive with a domestic partnership. Here are some of the few financial and legal benefits that come with a marriage certificate:

Qualifying for an estate tax marital deduction

In a major victory for art collectors, the Fifth Circuit court recently gave a $14.4 million estate tax refund and affirmed the use of fractional interest discounts for artworks to reduce estate taxes. Rejecting the government’s random assessment of a 10% discount on the valuation of the art, the Fifth Circuit instead agreed that the estate’s assessment of 47.5% should be used. This ruling opens the door for art collectors to greatly reduce the taxable amount of their estates.

Art Collecting and Estate Plans

Prior to this ruling, there have been major issues for art collectors and estate planning. If wealthy families sell their art while they are alive, a 28% capital gains tax is added to any appreciation in the value of the art. If they keep the artwork in the estate after they die, the full value of the art is included in the estate at the full fair market value on the date of death.