Including a no-contest clause in a will can be a powerful deterrent to challenges to the will. These clauses do, however, have limitations. Sometimes it’s possible to foresee that a family member or other person may not be satisfied with the inheritance planned for them through a will. A child who receives a smaller portion of a parent's estate than his siblings, for example, might be upset. This can lead to an unhappy person seeking to challenge the validity of the will.
Lacking an official place to bury their beloved pets, the citizens of Belgrade, Serbia, have turned to clandestine methods. They have created hidden pet cemeteries in the city's parks. It used to be that cities did not worry too much about what to do with residents' deceased pets. Most people were content to dispose of the remains through cremation or to allow the local authorities to dispose of the remains however they wanted. Many people today treat their pets like they were members of the...
Many state governments have experienced budget shortfalls in recent years. That has led to the inability to properly inspect and regulate funeral homes. In 2016 residents of one Flint, MI neighborhood began noticing an awful stench. They all knew where the smell was coming from. It was a local funeral home that had run into problems with regulators before.
In the U.K., taxes on estates are handled differently than in the U.S. They also tax gifts differently. The recent death of Bruce Forsyth, a television personality in the U.K., is a good opportunity to show how the U.K. and the U.S. treat taxes on gifts and estates differently. In the U.S., we have an estate tax on estates that exceed the exemption amount. Currently, that amount is $5.49 million per taxpayer (increasing to $5.6 million on Jan. 1, 2018). The estate must pay tax on the value ...
People who want to have their remains in an environmentally friendly manner have not been presented with many options. There is a new cremation method which may be the answer. Some people today are more concerned about their environmental footprint than ever before. They are even willing to pay more for cleaner cars, even if those cars go slower than others. People will go out of their way to recycle their garbage and use green products. Until now, however, people who wanted an environmental...
When the specific reasons that an older person originally purchased life insurance no longer exist, that person might be tempted to save money by no longer paying the premiums. That can be a mistake. Most people purchase life insurance for specific reasons, the most common of which is to ensure that a spouse or other loved ones are taken care of when they die. If a spouse predeceases the policy holder, however, or if the other family members are no longer in need of support, then many people ...
A court in London has determined that trusts created by a former Russian senator are not trusts. This is because they were designed to be a sham to hide assets from creditors. The name Sergey Pugachev probably does not ring a bell for most Americans. In Russia, however, he is a household name for his alleged crimes. Pugachev used to be an elected Russian senator who owned a large bank. The bank was declared bankrupt in 2010 and an investigation was launched to determine if there had been a...
If you are the beneficiary of an IRA whose owner has recently passed away, it is important that you not do anything without getting advice. One of the biggest estate administration mistakes that people make after someone dies concerns something that is not technically part of the estate at all. It has to do with inherited IRAs. Because these accounts are given to beneficiaries directly and they do not go through probate, they are not part of the estate.
With the possibility of major tax reform passing, you might be tempted to put off estate planning. That would be a mistake. Whenever the government starts talking about making major changes to tax laws, many people decide to take a wait and see approach to estate planning. This seems to make sense. Why get an estate plan, when the law might change soon and make the plans less than ideal? It might be better to wait and see what happens and then make estate plans for the new law. There are pr...
If you are the beneficiary of an IRA whose owner has recently passed away, it is important that you not do anything without getting advice. One of the biggest estate administration mistakes that people make after someone dies concerns something that is not technically part of the estate at all. It has to do with inherited IRAs. Because these accounts are given to beneficiaries directly and they do not go through probate, they are not part of the estate. The importance of IRAs to overall inheri...
