We're excited to announce that we have joined the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce. We also recently became an accredited business with the Better Business Bureau, where we are proud to have an A+ rating. March has been a busy month for us. Thank you for telling your friends, clients, and loved ones about the importance of proper estate planning. Please remember to send them to Learned Lawyer for their complementary estate planning education meeting. Or, if you could use a bit of ...
What to do with all this stuff?
One common issue for my clients is how to handle distribution of their "stuff" -- what estate planning lawyers call "tangible personal property." There's a really easy answer, and you can get started on it right now! But first, some terminology: Types of Property Lawyers divide property into two major groups: "real" and "personal." Real property is land and the objects permanently attached to the land (houses, office buildings, etc.). Personal property is everything else. We also ...
Who Does What in My Estate Plan — Or What is a Fiduciary?
We've had some questions lately about the roles people play in estate plans. These people (which lawyers call a "fiduciary"), include your personal representative, your trustee, your "agents," and the guardians for your minor children. Personal Representative Your Personal Representative (or "PR") is a person you designate in your Will. His or her job is simply to wrap up your financial affairs after you die. (The out-of-date name for this job was the "executor." We don't use that term ...
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Learned Lawyer featured on Compassionate Boise
At Learned Lawyer, we believe in providing peace of mind to our clients. Usually, we do this through estate planning and probate services. But we also believe in giving back to our community. Scott Learned, the owner and attorney at Learned Lawyer, regularly provides free or low-cost legal services. He volunteers to represent children who have been removed from their parents and are in foster care during child protection cases. He also provides advice and services to non-profit ...
How Will the New Tax Proposal Impact Your Estate Planning?
About the New Tax Proposal Republicans in the U.S. House released their new tax proposal yesterday. The full text of the document is available on the web. It's 429 pages and proposes to simplify the tax code, repeal the alternate minimum tax, and reduce corporate taxes. Of course, this bill is a first draft and is in the early stages of the legislative process. It is fair to say that this version of the bill will not become law, though many of its proposals might. So, how will the new tax ...
Add your child to your deed? No!
I get asked often why you shouldn't just add your child to your deed on a house or vacation home. Doing so is an awful idea and should never be done. And, listen, if you can get a lawyer to say you should never do something, it's probably a really bad idea. Here's why: Gift Tax When you add a child to your deed, you are gifting a 50% share of the house to that child. That gift is subject to the gift tax, and you would be required to file a Form 709 with the IRS to declare that gift. If ...
New Section 2704 Regulations
The IRS has issued some proposed regulations for comment regarding Section 2704 of the U.S. Tax Code. If you aren’t up to speed on your tax sections, Section 2704 is a provision that applies to (among other things) the concept of the family limited partnership (FLP), a tool for families to use to pass wealth to the next generation. For years, high-wealth families (and the lawyers that represent them) have been using a technique known as a “valuation discount” to obtain tax savings for the ...
Check Your Beneficiary Designations!
Please, right now, stop what you are doing and take a few minutes to log into your retirement accounts and call your insurance broker to check your beneficiary designations. The theme this week has been people who have passed with no beneficiary designated or with the incorrect beneficiary designated. In one case, a man designated his wife as the beneficiary on his retirement account. They divorced, he remarried, and lived another twenty years. But he never changed his beneficiary from ...
Star Trek Actor Left No Will
Anton Yelchin is best known for playing Clumsy Smurf in The Smurfs (oh, yeah, and Pavel Chekov in the new Star Trek movies). At the age of 27, he died in an accident. News media are reporting that his parents have filed probate, claiming that he did not have a will. His estate (which is a legal word that just means “everything you own at the time of your death”) is already worth about $1.4 million. Because he died in an accident (his Jeep rolled down the driveway and killed him), that ...
