2013 ushered in not only a new tax year, but also a number of new tax laws. Now is the perfect time to schedule an appointment with your Irvine estate planning attorney to review your estate plan, keeping these things in mind:
1. If you don’t already have one, get an estate plan.
2. Be sure the people named as guardians for your children, executors of your estate or trustees are still the right people for the job.
3. Determine if the terms of your estate plan still meet your objectives, and that the beneficiaries and your bequests are still relevant.
4. Make sure your assets have been properly titled in the name of your trust.
5. Confirm that all beneficiary designations for retirement plans and financial accounts are correct.
6. If you plan to make gifts to individuals, see if you are taking full advantage of the maximum annual exclusion, which was $13,000 in 2012 and has been bumped to $14,000 for 2013.
7. If you are over the age of 70 1/2, and are considering a gift of $100,000 or less to charity, you may wish to consider a charitable IRA rollover.
8. If you make large gifts to charity, you may want to consider making split-interest gifts that provide an income tax deduction while preserving an interest in property to heirs.
9. If you have already used a majority of your federal gift tax exemption, you may want to consider creating a grantor-retained annuity trust.
10. Talk to your estate planning attorney about other estate planning strategies to take advantage of your generation-skipping transfer tax or remaining federal gift tax exemptions.
The Flanigan Law Group provides Southern California residents with personal attention for estate planning, administration and litigation legal services. When disputes between families, arise, they are very successful in resolving legal estate issues quickly and efficiently while preserving financial and emotional resources. Contact the Flanigan Law Group at 949-450-0042.