@artloversplus It looks to me you wouldn’t have gotten step up If your mother voided irrevocable trust before her death. Does voiding do anything tax-wise?
The point is that I did not void the Residual Trust when she was alive. So the property was not included in her estate and no step up. The Residual Trust had a separate EIN and filed separate tax returns for 10 years.
What I wrote was an after thought that I should have void the Residual Trust before she die.
And yes, according to our lawyer, I would have gotten a step up had I voided the Residual Trust to return the property to the living trust on the grounds of necessity. That will including a title change on all the properties in the Trust.
Now a days, unless your estate is well over 11 million, you need not to worry about setting a separate Trust to avoid estate tax.
You mean you void to give the fund to your mother? That makes sense. We have an old irrevocable trust from the ice age. It is a big pain. I’ve been thinking what to do with it. I guess we could look into voiding it.
Sorry I haven’t been around, but there’s a lot of good advice here.
It’s the “stretch IRA” part that almost bit us on the rear. (It’s a traditional IRA with no nondeductible contributions, so there’s no issue with basis.) The trust people are telling us it’s able to be considered a “see-through” trust, so my wife won’t have to pull it all out (and pay taxes on it) within five years. I’m not so sure, but that’s why we pay the experts.
If you didn’t understand any of this, well, I’m not entirely sure I do either, so again: seek the advice of the experts.
Does anybody have their lawyer as executor for their will? This is what my 88 year old father has done (he is a widow). This addresses the family issues with siblings not trusting each other or their spouses. His lawyer also has POA and is the primary financial/legal contact for his assisted living facility.
@kiddie
A lawyer or a trust company(from a bank) as executor is a good idea, however, you need a big estate, otherwise at $350/hour, your estate value will run to the gound very soon. Based on my experiences doing my mom’s estate distrubution is a time consurming task. I think I spent at least 500+ hours for that, at $350/hour for a seasoned lawyer you can do the math. Tasks I have done include:
. Dismiss all the caregivers, one of the caregive won’t want to move out.
. Dispose her personal belongings in the house and there is a LOT.
. Sell her property, selection of realtors and renovation of the house to be sold.
. Find all her accounts and liquidate her stuff, including travel abroad to retrieve her bank box content.
. Corrdinate with the beneficiaries.
@Iglooo
As I said, I did not viod mom’d irrevocable trust, because I did not know I could. These are afterthoughts. If you have an irrevocable trust, you could hire a lawyer to try, but be careful of selecting the lawyer, he must know what he is doing.
For my 80+ year old father I think the lawyer will work fine as executor. My sister and I are estranged (his only two children), his house and possessions were already sold off when he moved to an assisted living facility, he has already prepaid his funeral expenses, and the lawyer is well aware of all of his finances (since he already takes care of his taxes, etc.)
I took care of both my in-laws estates when they died. For the first death, very little needed to be done, as the spouse just got everything (New York state law didn’t even require us to change the house ownership). My husband was the official executor for the second death, which didn’t require much work (house was already sold at that point and the will was pretty clear). Once we got an EIN for the estate it was smooth sailing. It was not very many hours, but it did take months to complete (especially the final taxes for the estate).