Life insurance — a useful tool for estate planning and management
An Estate without funds can be very difficult to administer! If the estate’s assets include real estate or a business to be sold, substantial cash may be needed to pay property taxes or wind down the business. If the beneficiaries of the Estate are Class C (siblings) or Class D (all others), New Jersey Transfer Inheritance Tax will need to be paid unless the inheritance is small. Many...
Special Needs Trusts continue to be Vital for People with Disabilities
The term “special needs trust” is used to refer to a trust that’s for benefit of a person with disabilities who depends on means-tested public benefits that have income limits or resource/asset limits. Sometimes these are “first party trusts” — created by the disabled person (over age 18) or his parent, grandparent, or guardian with court permission, or by a...
What to do if you want to resign as a fiduciary — don’t just walk away
Being appointed as a Guardian, Trustee or Agent under Power of Attorney can be an enormous task. Each of these appointments confers decision-making power and authority on the fiduciary, but at the same time, each of them involves tremendous responsibilities. In an ideal world, the document which appointed the fiduciary also appoints a string of successors and has a non-judicial way to...