Remember when you were young and believed in the tooth fairy? You’d put your newly-lost tooth under your pillow and, when you woke up, there was a little bit of money in its place. National Tooth Fairy Day is coming up on August 22nd, and trust us when we say that giving a mythical creature part of your body for unknown reasons in exchange for a small amount of money is preferable to probate court. Probate court takes way more than the tooth fairy, and its process is far more complex than switching out a tooth for some cash.

What is Probate?

Probate is the process in which someone’s assets and debts are disbursed after his or her death. Probate court supervises this procedure. If you die intestate (without an estate plan), your state’s law takes over and governs what happens with your assets.

Why You Need an Estate Plan

Contrary to popular belief, the state doesn’t get everything you own if you die intestate. This only happens when someone has no relatives. If the person in charge of managing your estate digs up some long-lost relative you didn’t know you had, then the state won’t get your money. However, you don’t want to leave the state with the ability to pawn off your possessions onto whomever. This is where an estate plan comes in.

Probate can also take time. The state mandates a period for creditors to file claims. Usually, the process is wrapped up within a year. But, sometimes, the process can drag on for much longer if there are family fights or disputes over property. If your family is like every other family in the world, then you know that there are always relatives who will make things way more difficult than they need to be. Dying intestate opens the floor to lengthy, drawn-out disputes, causing probate to drag on and on.

What All This Costs

Probate is also costly. When you die with no estate plan, the probate court itself oversees the process and appoints an attorney to handle your affairs. The fees for this take money away from your estate, and the administrator isn’t always someone you would have picked had you made a will.

If you have no estate plan, navigating the probate process is exhausting and annoying. Creating an estate plan and keeping it current will help your loved ones have peace of mind and wrap up your estate quickly and efficiently after you die.

If you would like more information on how Wild, Felice and Partners, P.A can help with protecting your asset, providing plan for your family and building your estate plan,  please call 954-944-2855 or visit us today at www.WFPLaw.com.

Wedding season is upon us, and once you’ve planned the big day, gotten all dressed up, cut the cake, and gone on the honeymoon, it’s time to talk about something far less exciting: death.

While not exactly the most romantic way to spend time with your spouse, it’s necessary to update or create a new estate plan after you marry him or her. Estate planning isn’t too difficult, and, if you and your spouse can get through planning an entire wedding successfully, you can get this done easily. While discussing your death isn’t as much fun as trying out different wedding cakes, you’ll be grateful you did.

Why Involve Your Spouse in Your Estate Plan?

Marriage is a huge life change, and people may assume that, if they die, their stuff will automatically go to their spouse. Sometimes that’s true, but, often, it is not. It’s best to write a will that will expressly lay out where you want your assets to go after death. Pets, children, possessions, land: all of this needs to be sorted.

Marital v. Separate Property

There are two types of property to consider when planning your estate, as well as three documents. Separate and marital property differ based on ownership. Separate property is property acquired prior to marriage. Your spouse has no ownership rights to it. This category also includes property that you two agreed was separate in a prenuptial agreement, as well as gifts given specifically to you.

Marital property, by contrast, is jointly owned. Property that was purchased using the income of either spouse, property given to both people, income or assets earned, and other similar entities are considered “marital property.”

What’s in an Estate Plan?

When you know the different types of property, you can better formulate and structure your estate plans. An estate plan should include a last will and testament, health care surrogate, and durable power of attorney. For more information on these categories, see here.

In addition to the day-to-day decisions you and your spouse will make together, you also need to focus on the big ones, particularly when estate planning. Decisions include who will be the guardian of your children, who will take care of your pets, which gifts you want to bequeath, whether you want to make property jointly-owned, and more.

While you will still probably make individual estate plans, you should also incorporate one another into your own plan. You’ve walked down the aisle with each other, now it’s time to walk into an attorney’s office and plan your estate.

If you would like more information on how Wild, Felice and Partners, P.A can help with protecting your asset, providing plan for your family and building your estate plan,  please call 954-944-2855 or visit us today at www.WFPLaw.com.

Summer is about to end.  Classes are about to start and stores are crowded with parents trying to get the best deals on school supplies.  Florida has many benefits, like inexpensive college tuition for in-state residents, warm weather all year round and access to theme parks, like Disney and Universal Studios.  However, there is also another benefit of living in Florida—the homestead protection provided by the Florida Constitution.

The overall purpose of the homestead exemption is to protect the family by protecting a family’s shelter from being attacked by creditors. In this regard, the Florida Constitution protects homesteads in three specific ways: (1) it provides a homestead with an exemption from taxes; (2) it protects homesteads from forced sale by creditors; and (3) it delineates the restrictions a homestead owner faces when attempting to alienate or devise the homestead property. Also, homestead prevents loved ones from having to go through the lengthy and expensive process of probate because the homestead is passed directly to the designated heir.

Be that as it may, homestead creates interesting circumstances with regards to probate. When a property owner dies, there are restrictions on how the property can be transferred to the family.

Who gets the property will often rely on who survives the decedent. If a spouse or minor child survives the owner of a homestead property, the homestead may not be devised.  If there is no minor child, the surviving spouse gets the property. However, the property owner may not give less than a fee simple interest to the surviving spouse.  If a spouse and lineal descendants survive the decedent, the surviving spouse takes a life estate in the homestead with a vested remainder to the lineal descendants in being at the time of the decedent’s death, per stirpes.

Ultimately, homestead laws trump any clauses in a will or trust.  If a spouse or lineal descendant survives a decedent, the descendant cannot devise the property to anyone in a will or trust.  Therefore, it is important to understand how homestead property could affect your overall estate plan.

For more information on Estate Planning, Asset Protection, and Probate administration visit our website at www.wfplaw.com

It’s A Wild World. Are Your Protected?

It is that time of year in which people are just realizing that their leases are expiring and are searching for a new place with the best rate, location, and amenities available.  This means for you, rental property owners, that your doors are about to be flooded with people looking for the best deal they can find.  However, before you accept any new leases, it is very important to make sure that all your assets are protected.

Asset protection is simply risk management planning that tries to prevent a lawsuit before it happens.  A comprehensive asset protection plan will be structured with the thought in mind that someday the plan may be laid out in front of a judge or a creditor who wants to attack the plan.  Even though there is no perfect strategy that will protect all of your assets all the time, there are ways, as a rental property owner, you can protect yourself from future liability, like creating your business as a limited liability company (LLC).

An LLC limits personal vulnerability to potential lawsuits related to the property. For example, if a lessee has a party and someone happens to get hurt, it would prevent the victim from going after your personal assets.

Also, as the owner of the rental property, you can enjoy the benefits of pass-through taxation. Since the IRS classifies a real estate holding company with one owner as they would a sole proprietorship.  The LLC is disregarded for federal tax purposes and income and capital gains from the LLC pass through directly to you.  Therefore, you are able to avoid double taxation, while still enjoying the protections offered by the LLC.  However, if you happen to have several owners, you not only get the benefit of pass-through taxation, but you also enjoy more flexibility than either a corporation or a partnership because you can have owners or third-party managers manage your rental property.

Essentially, as a property owner, it is important to protect yourself from future lawsuits and potential creditors.  Therefore, by setting up your business as an LLC, not only do you avoid personal liability, but you also get some extra tax benefits.

For more information on Estate Planning, Asset Protection, and Probate administration visit our website at www.wfplaw.com

It’s A Wild World. Are Your Protected?

What Digital Assets to Include in Your Estate Plan

The “digital asset” is a fairly new concept that has not been incorporated into estate planning until
recent years; therefore, many have failed to even take their digital presence into consideration when
planning their estates. As we discovered last week (See “The Benefits of Preserving Your Digital Legacy”), if you have a digital existence, it is in your best interest to incorporate such disposition with the rest of your
assets.

In determining what digital assets you should include in your estate plan, it is first important to understand
exactly what assets we are referring to. Digital assets include all online accounts (profiles) and digital files
that you own (see “Digital Asset Inventory,” below). As a starting point, it may be helpful to determine
and separate accounts in terms of their monetary and sentimental values, as you will likely want to plan for
the disposition of both types.

Monetary Digital Assets: You may want to leave specific instructions for the monetary accounts,
including the account information, and how you want the account to be closed or maintained. Because of
the safety concerns associated with such accounts, you should be cautious with how you record the
information. For example, you may not want to include all of the usernames and passwords onto one
document, as it could be detrimental if it falls into the wrong hands. Therefore, you may want to consider
putting usernames on a separate document than passwords, and can be stored at different locations or with
different family members. On that same note, there are many afterlife management companies that store all
of this information for you. This presents the same concern that all of the information could be exposed, in
the event that the security system is breached.

Sentimental Digital Assets: With sentimental accounts, your main concern will be minimizing the hassle
associated with loved one’s accessing your accounts. As explained in “The Social Networker’s Asset
Protection Guide” (above), each account has different user agreements, which will effect how you instruct
their disposition. Therefore, it is important to read the user agreements for each account, to ensure that your instructional provisions are consistent with what you have legally agreed to. Also, don’t forget to include those files that you have on your computer, phone, a zip drive, or on a “cloud.” Be certain to include these digital assets in your estate plan, as failure to do so can lead to problems arising from terms of service
agreements, privacy, and rights of beneficiaries.

Now that you have determined your digital assets, it is all about legacy, privacy, & security planning.
Go through each item on your list, and decide which type of planning it falls under. Additionally,
consider who you would want to appoint to take care of the management and distribution of your
digital assets. This will help your attorney draft the appropriate provisions that will preserve and
protect your digital afterlife.

Digital Asset Inventory

Q: What Digital Assets Do You Own?

Consider the following digital assets as a prompt in creating your own digital inventory:
▪ Email accounts
▪ Social networking accounts
o Facebook
o Instagram
o Twitter
o LinkedIn
▪ Blogs
o WordPress
o Blogger
▪ Domain names
o GoDaddy
▪ Online subscriptions
▪ Pictures and Videos
o Flickr
o Kodak Easyshare
o YouTube
▪ Virtual Businesses
o Ebay businesses/seller accounts
▪ Online payment accounts
o Bank Accounts
o Shopping accounts (Amazon, Ebay, Paypal)
o Bill accounts
▪ Computer Games – Avatars
o World of Warcraft
o Second Life
▪ Any personal files on a:
o Computer
o “Cloud” (online hard-drive)
o Zip drive
o Phone