is looking to meet with unmarried or same sex couples that have yet to prepare their estate plans. Disarm the ticking time bomb.

If you own a small business worth over $75,000 and you have not yet completed your estate plan, your spouse or child may end up suffering.

The estate tax is scheduled to come back in 2011, with a $1 million exemption and a 55% rate. Only 8 more months to get your trust drafted.

For South Florida couples that are unmarried or same sex, unique estate planning issues need to be faced.  In Florida, unmarried unions are not legally protected which makes living trusts the estate planning vehicle of choice for most of the GLBT community.  Your South Florida estate planning attorney can fully inform you of the benefits and drawbacks of each estate planning option, but this article will discuss the advantages of having a living trust in place.

A South Florida living trust, in conjunction with a financial power of attorney, will provide your partner with the ability to manage your assets in the event that you become disabled or incapacitated.  Powers of attorney, health care surrogates, and living wills are ancillary documents that can insure that your partner will be in charge of all legal, financial, and medical decisions in the event of your disability or incapacitation.  Without these documents in place, your partner may not even be able to visit you in the hospital, much less make those important decisions about your care or treatment.

A South Florida living trust is superior to the antiquated last will and testament because wills are significantly easier to challenge than trusts, which makes for a very sloppy division of assets if any of your friends or family were not completely supportive of your life style or your choice of partner.  Moreover, if you distribute your assets via a will, a notice of the proceeding must be given to your closest legal heirs, providing them with an opportunity to object and instigating the fights previously talked about.  While South Florida trusts are protected from public viewing, a will is a public record, which eliminates privacy and aids in disputes.  Even if you are 100 percent certain that no one in your family will challenge your will, the avoidance of the probate process alone is worth having a trust in place.  Many people incorrectly believe that having a will avoids probate.  In actuality, all wills must be probated and the legal process will be time consuming possibly delaying the surviving party’s access to needed funds for over two years.

Many South Florida unmarried couples believe that these problems can be avoided by simply putting their partner’s name on their assets, or joint tenancy, until they learn of the many pitfalls.  For appreciated assets, such as stocks and real estate, there are tax disadvantages to receiving assets from a joint tenant.  While inheriting from a will or trust at death eliminates taxable capital gains for the survivor, joint tenancy only eliminates one-half of those capital gains since you are only “inheriting” one-half of the property.  Moreover, you may be exposed to the debts and liabilities of your partner.  An even worse result of this type of “title” planning is that you lose control over where the assets go after your surviving partner dies.  Perhaps your goal is to provide for your partner for life, but then to control where the unused assets will go after he or she passes.  Only a South Florida living trust would provide you with this ability.

For more on the benefits of living trusts, please contact the South Florida estate planning attorneys of Wild Felice & Pardo, P.A. at 954-944-2855 or via email at info@wfplaw.com.  Let us protect what you value most.

IRAs and Estate Planning

With a growing number of retired people in South Florida, not paying attention to how your IRA will be distributed after your death could cost your family a small fortune.  Your designated beneficiaries can still receive the IRA proceeds but they will be forced to empty the account and pay taxes on it much faster if it is not addressed as part of a comprehensive South Florida estate plan.

The beneficiaries of IRA plans may stretch out the distributions across their life expectancy.  Through aggressive and creative estate planning, an IRA of decent size could be converted into generational wealth.  You may be able to use your IRA to find your grandchildren’s college education while saving your children estate taxes in the process.  It all depends on the beneficiary forms and how they fit with the rest of your South Florida estate plan.

The key is to make certain that your IRA’s custodian rules allow your heirs to move the IRA to a different custodian via a trustee-to-trustee transfer that avoids triggering a taxable event.  Your South Florida estate planning attorney should make certain that your heirs are free to name successor beneficiaries which would allow your grandchildren to take distributions based on their life expectancies rather than on your children’s.

People assume that any lawyer is qualified to prepare their South Florida estate plan or worse yet, they attempt to do it themselves.  Wills don’t govern accounts with beneficiary designations such as 401(k) plans, life insurance policies, or IRA’s which could cost your heirs thousands of dollars.  Estate planning is a legal specialty and you should always consult your South Florida estate planning attorney for all of your estate planning needs.  Please call the South Florida estate planning attorneys of Wild Felice & Pardo, P.A. at 954-944-2855 to set up your free consultation, or email us at info@wfplaw.com for more information.  Let us protect what you value most.