NC and SC Estate Planning and Elder Law Firm

Planning for Long-Term Care Should Be Done A Long Time Before You Need It

52% of all adults over the age of 65 are projected to spend time in a nursing-home or need some other form of long-term care in their lifetime. We work with clients who want to proactively plan for the cost of long-term care without sacrificing their quality of life to pay for it.

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2017 was a big year in the art world. A Saudi prince bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for $450 million. And a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was bought by a Japanese collector for over $110 million, bumped Andy Warhol from the top spot on the list of most expensive American artists. It will be hard for 2018 to top those eye-popping deals, but the year is young, so you never know! What we do know is that art collections need to be factored into estate plans if one wants to avoid making some big tax mistakes. When dealing with a valuable collection of anything, special estate planning tactics should be employed to ensure the collection ends up where the collector wants it to, and to minimize the collector’s estate tax bill.
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When President Trump was running for office, he vowed to get rid of the estate tax. The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” he signed into law in December doesn’t manage to do that, but it does make a few changes that will impact large estates.

The new law temporarily doubles the exemption amount for estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes from $5 million to $10 million. Only about 5,000 estates a year are above the new $10 million limit, so the law does go a decent way towards reducing the estate tax burden. 

This new limit is in effect for tax years 2018 through 2025, but it is not static, it is indexed to inflation, even for 2018. As in the past, couples can plan together and double their exemption amount. 

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There is no easy way to divide up money between family members because no matter what you do, someone is going to feel like they were treated unfairly. And that person’s complaints are going to make everyone else in the family as miserable as he or she is.
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When Hugh Hefner, the famous founder of Playboy magazine, died, speculation about who would inherit his fortune immediately began. Now, some details have been released, and they are a bit shocking considering Hef was known as much for the parties he threw as his publishing prowess.

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They say a fool and his money are soon parted, but modern-day scammers are getting so sophisticated that many non-foolish folks are being taken in as well. The federal courts and the U.S. Marshals Service are...

 

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Little did Tammy Wynette know, she could have had another hit on her hands by doing a follow-up to her classic song D-I-V-O-R-C-E on post-divorce E-S-T-A-T-E P-L-A-N-N-I-N-G. Maybe not a Number 1, but it would probably be popular in legal circles. Maybe? Okay, it’s a stretch. But estate planning should come after divorce in the real world even if a song about it wouldn’t register on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
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 Honor Our Veterans This Holiday Season

“A person dies twice: once when they take their final breath, and later, the last time their name is spoken.” That is the driving sentiment behind the national “Wreaths Across America” movement. Each December, volunteers place wreaths on individual veterans’ graves at over 1,200 locations throughout the U.
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“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” -Acts 20:35

Like so many scripture lessons, this one grows more poignant as you get older. As a child, you were excited for Christmas because you hoped Santa would bring you everything on your list. Now, you take more joy in seeing your children and grandchild open gifts than you get from opening gifts yourself. 

Our firm works with many people who are at this stage in life.
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Have you ever sent an email that you hope your spouse never reads? If the answer is yes, you better make sure your estate plan includes instructions about who gets access to your digital assets when you die.

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What would you do if a stranger showed up at your home out of nowhere, and told you they were your new legal guardian? They have the power to control your finances, make healthcare decisions for you, decide where you live, and can even prevent you from seeing your family if they don’t think it is a good idea for you to be around them. It sounds impossible, but a recent article in The New Yorker details how this nightmare scenario is actually playing out.

The article focuses on the plight of a particular couple in Nevada, Rudy and Rennie North, but it is something that could happen virtually anywhere thanks to the relative lack of oversight in the guardianship system.

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