<p>Yea, it’s also possible that one of the kids or grandkids could end up with special needs (paralysis, health issues, etc.), so allowing the survivor to have more flexibility to help as is needed seems very important to me. With our significant age difference and my extended family’s longeivity, it’s likely I will be the survivor, but it’s good to have some of these discussions now so we can see how closely our ideas are aligned.</p>
<p>For example, our S got a lot more in financial gifts than D. I believe it was at least partly because he was the first-born child I had, plus the first grandSON. His savings account was 5x D’s. He got a big (4 figure) gift from his aunt (H’s sister) when he started college. He also was a NMF & got a BIG merit award as a freshman & more throughout his tenure in college, as well as paid research and internships and a great job. D received no similar gift from her aunt and we are paying full-freight for her. Since we didn’t spend any of the Coverdell for S, we applied it all to D, which helped. She has held a few minimum wage jobs but her field doesn’t offer the type of paid opportunities S’s field does.</p>
<p>We turned over all the accounts to both kids when they reached 18 or 21 (can’t remember). We have never had fights about finances–generally closely in accord. We both think it good to allow the survivor between us to be able to adjust percentages based on needs.</p>
<p>Thank you HImom to start this thread. We just begin to think these kinds of thing now. As a private client, we get all these services from our bank. Our appointment starts with retirement planning on next Saturday and then these other planning. I will check on this thread very carefully so at least I know what questions to ask. </p>
<p>Because DW stays home and have time to do office visits, all of our assets and bank accounts are under her name only. Don’t know if that could pose any problem when we start to draft documents with my name on any paper. Technically, I don’t own any thing other than my own 401K and an etrade Roth IRA account.</p>
<p>It shouldn’t create any issues, Dad II because all of the assets that go into the trust will be renamed as belonging to the trust. Instead of your wife being the owner of your home and accounts, they will be in the name of The Trust of Dad II and Mrs. Dad II. You will both sign all the papers when your account officer draws them up.</p>
<p>HImom, the standard language is something like to my surviving children - sometimes written “issue” and you can name them - and then if one of them predeceases, then that share goes to that child’s surviving children. Any estates lawyer has forms that do this in any variety.</p>
<p>We also have the option of using the bank’s services to learn more about estate planning. Perhaps we will go in and talk with them about it as well, even though we have found an estate attorney we like. I am still interested in gathering more information before we start retitling things and moving them around. I have done a pretty good inventory and we are double-checking the beneficiaries on all of our accounts. </p>
<p>I can email the personal banker and see what he has to offer. He did recommend two other estate attorneys but we opted to use a family friend of a friend who is also an estate attorney. It seems like a good time for us personally to start earnestly doing financial planning. We have met a lot of our major financial goals–funded our kids’ educations, purchased our house, and funded our retirement. We want to see what options we have moving forward and what makes sense for our situation. </p>
<p>Now that Congress has made the $5M estate & gift tax + inflation “permanent,” it seems a good time to decide what we want to do with any assets we don’t consume in our lifetimes and are able to leave to our kids and any descendants they may have. We are fortunate that our parents and sibs are pretty financially comfortable, so that shouldn’t be an issue.</p>
<p>Yes, I did take a few courses in estates in law school, but that was many decades ago and I really want to be SURE that the these tools and the possible extra complications they introduce are worth the benefits to be gained. </p>
<p>Attorneys and other people can make recommendations, but ideally it would be to carry out the wishes of H & me (or whomever is hiring the attorneys and others). Attorneys can offer insights about the good and bad of what has happened with other families/clients/similar situations, but ultimately it is important to be sure it is what the CLIENTS want.</p>
<p>"Thank you HImom to start this thread. We just begin to think these kinds of thing now. As a private client, we get all these services from our bank. Our appointment starts with retirement planning on next Saturday and then these other planning. I will check on this thread very carefully so at least I know what questions to ask. "</p>
<p>Wow, you get great services for someone as impoverished as you are supposed to be.</p>
<p>I have never said we are impoverished, even though I admit we are grateful that beloved relatives chose to gift our us/our kids to help pay their tuitions. Does that imply we are or were impoverished?</p>
<p>I am surprised and gratified that we are being offered financial services from our bank and broker. We never did receive or apply for or receive ANY need-based FAid at any place our kids attended. Don’t understand or appreciate your attitude, dragonmom.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, make sure you and your H don’t leave all assets to each other upon death. My MIL and step FIL did that; my MIL died first and all her assets went to her H. Almost immediately, someone swooped in and tried to get him to marry her and I am sure he would have agreed to leave everything to her because he desperately needed someone to take care of him even though my H flew to attend to him once a month from across the country. He was 91 and had no children of his own. But he died shortly after my MIL. My H almost didn’t receive any inheritance from his mother.</p>
<p>We didn’t know about this until after his death. This woman was brazen enough to call us and told us he promised her his car. My H told her he had no knowledge of any promise made to her.</p>
<p>My H and I have a trust and whoever dies first, half of the trust would be distributed directly to our children.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, make sure you and your H don’t leave all assets to each other upon death. My MIL and step FIL did that; my MIL died first and all her assets went to her H. Almost immediately, someone swooped in and tried to get him to marry her and I am sure he would have agreed to leave everything to her because he desperately needed someone to take care of him even though my H flew to attend to him once a month from across the country. He was 91 and had no children of his own. But he died shortly after my MIL. My H almost didn’t receive any inheritance from his mother.</p>
<p>We didn’t know about this until after his death. This woman was brazen enough to call us and told us he promised her his car. My H told her he had no knowledge of any promise made to her.</p>
<p>My H and I have a trust and whoever dies first, half of the trust would be distributed directly to our children.</p>
<p>A revocable living trust is ignored for tax purposes; no separate tax return is filed. The income is reported on the return of the “grantor” (the person creating the trust). That’s inherent in the idea of “revocable” – no transfer has taken place.</p>
<p>Yes, there are always predatory folks who want to swoop in and prey on wealthy folks. Will have to plan carefully. Good ideas being raised here. Thanks.</p>
<p>My FIL’s trust was a doozer out of left field. He carefully kept track of every cent he had spent on each of his kids – cars, tuition, computers, you name it – and subtracted those gifts from the total each child recieved. Excruciatingly “fair” , but nobody knew at the time they were attending expensive LACs that those educations were counting against them in the trust. Plus, the trust remains untouchable until the time that both his exwife (my MIL) AND her present husband die. My H asked his father for very little and funded college on his own, so he inherited much more than some of his siblings. A few siblings could really use their share of the trust right now, but may not touch it. FIL died 20 years ago, and my MIL and her husband could easily live another 20 years. </p>
<p>Standing joke in the family is to imagine us as the subjects of a “who done it” murder mystery if my in-laws died in a suspicious manner. Who stands to profit? Everyone! It would be awful.</p>
<p>Please share how someone with the assets of a private client would make themselves eligible for need based college aid. This could be a huge help for folks in this income bracket.</p>
<p>This seems to be a big deal of late, no doubt because the boomers are getting old and starting to die off. It’s in all the money magazines and on the talk shows – estate planning.</p>
<p>Here’s my own take and maybe I’m an idiot and missing something but fwiw I really think the complexity of this issue is vastly overrated by many. Unless you are leaving a business or many millions worth of assets in excess of 5 million then I don’t think this has to be brain surgery.</p>
<p>Also, I think families get into thorny issues when the parents start to “help” financially their adult kids and their grandkids. That’s when the hard feelings come out, imo. Sure, we would have loved my parents to contribute to our kids’ educations but now I’m really glad they didn’t go down that road for any of us. We all have handled it and now there’s no – well so and so went to that private school and mine just went to the cc so I should get more inheritance. I didn’t really get why my parents were so unwilling to “help” at times but I think they were right and I will probably try to emulate them when my own kids are educating their kids.</p>
<p>My own parents did the revocable trust back in their sixties. They are now in their eighties and have updated it whenever they’ve moved to new states but otherwise it is just fine. Very clear, very simple. We all know what’s in it and we are all just fine with the terms. Divided equally between their kids. If a kid should die then divided equally between their living kids and their deceased kid’s kids.</p>
<p>They explicitly state in the document and to us in person that they want very much for the trust to be left intact until there is a true family financial crisis. It is seen as something to be kept in the background, not to be “used”. We all feel the same way about that. I think the revocable trust is good in that it makes public what each of us might be tempted to do with the money in that the others would have to know if we dipped into our “share”. </p>
<p>So my DH and I have also done the revocable trust and made it very simple. We did it with two visits with an attorney and I actually caught him on several errors he’d made on the second visit.</p>
<p>My general advice is that these “experts” are human and what they do is not really that complex so check their work and if it doesn’t make sense, insist on a thorough answer. And overall their services should not amount to a lot of money unless you’re leaving something really monumental.</p>
<p>I do our taxes, too. So maybe I’m just a control freak on these things.</p>
<p>Cynic in me thinks it’s estate lawyers effort to drum up business. With the federal exemption at $5M or $10M if a couple, estate planning may have become much less in demand. For an average family with two kids, they don’t need much planning until they accumulate $20M.</p>
<p>There are not as many “average” families as one would think, and planning is important, regardless of wealth. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive, but it’s the right thing to do for your kids. If your wishes are clearly laid out, no one has to guess and there are fewer disputes, hard feelings, and the burdens are shared.</p>
<p>cbreeze- wow, what a story! I can see why you want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
There are ways to write a living trust and still leave everything to your spouse which will protect this type of thing from happening. We have left everything to each other (DH and I) but a large portion of the estate stays in a new trust that is formed upon the death of one of us, which cannot be accessed for other than living expenses for the living spouse,without the approval of our executor. In other words, My Dh would not be able to will the money to anyone else, without our executor’s knowledge and sign-off. (Our executor happens to be our son, and I know he’ll be looking out for his dad’s, his sisters, and his own best interest.) </p>
<p>That’s one of the good things about a trust. It enables you to make all kinds of stipulations that are more difficult with just a will, even if you don’t have 20 mil to leave, which we most certainly don’t.</p>
<p>We also stipulated in the trust that a reasonable portion of the estate is set aside to care for my mom and my MIL, in case something were to happen to my Dh and myself. This way, the kids will have money to draw on to take care of the grandmas, if need be. I think they would, anyway, but this leaves no question in our minds that they will be cared for.</p>