You can be a POA and a joint account owner

You can be POA and Joint Account Owner

July 15, 2021

Adding another person to your bank account provides both of you with complete access to the account. You can be POA and joint account owner, but the two are very different roles, explains the article “What are my rights when someone adds me to a bank account?” from Lehigh Valley Live.

A joint account is a bank or investment account shared by two individuals, although more than two people may be on an account. They have equal access to funds, as well as equal responsibilities for any fees or expenses associated with the account. If there are transactions, depending upon the rules of the institution, all owners may be required to sign documents. The key is how the account is titled. That’s the controlling factor in determining how the assets in the account are divided, if one of the owners dies. There are several different types of joint ownership.

One is “Joint Tenants with Rights of Survivorship,” or JTWROS. If one of the account owners should die, the assets in the account go directly to the surviving account holder. These assets do not go through probate.

Then there’s “Tenants in Common,” or TIC. With TIC, each individual account owner has the right to designate a beneficiary for their portion of the assets upon their death. The assets might not be split 50/50. How the account is titled lets the account owners divide ownership however they want.

Another one: “Joint Tenants by the Entirety.” This describes a married couple who own real estate or a financial account as a legal entity with equal ownership. Neither person may transfer their half of the property during their lifetime or through a will or a trust. When one spouse dies, the entire account goes to the surviving spouse and it transfers without passing through probate.

In the example given at the start of the article, the establishment of a joint account gives both the father and son equal access to the account. If the father is unable to handle the account at any time in the future, for whatever reason, the son will be able to step in.

Power of Attorney or POA is a completely different thing. A POA is a legal document giving a person the authority to act on behalf of another person for a specific transaction or general legal and financial matters. Just as there are numerous types of joint ownership, there are numerous types of POA.

A general POA gives a person the power to act on behalf of the principal for all legal, property and financial matters, as long as the principal’s mental capacity is sound. The Durable POA gives authority to a person to act on behalf of the principal, even after the principal becomes mentally incapacitated. Special or limited power of attorney gives authority to act only for specific matters or transactions. A Springing Durable POA provides authority to act only under certain events or levels of incapacitation, which is defined in detail in the document.

You can be POA and joint account owner. These are two different ways to help a parent with financial and legal activities. An estate planning attorney can help create the POA that best fits the situation.

If you would like to read more about Powers of Attorney, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: Lehigh Valley Live (June 10, 2021) “What are my rights when someone adds me to a bank account?”

QTIP Trusts Help avoid Estate Taxes

June 22, 2021

QTIP trusts help avoid estate taxes. Using a QTIP trust allows one spouse to create a trust to benefit the surviving spouse, while providing the surviving spouse with up to nine months to decide how to treat the gift for tax purposes, explains a recent article “How Certain Trusts Soften The Blow Of Estate Tax Increases” from Financial Advisor. This flexibility is just one reason for this trust’s popularity. However, while the QTIP election can be made on the 2021 gift tax return, which is filed in 2022, the choice as to how much of the transfer will be subject to tax can be made in 2022.

The current estate and gift tax exemption of $11.7 per individual is slated to sunset in 2025, but the current legislative mood may curtail that legislation sooner. Right now, flexibility is paramount.

The surviving spouse is named as the primary beneficiary of the trust and must be the only beneficiary of the trust during the lifetime of the surviving spouse, in terms of both receiving income or principal from the trust.

If the decision is made to treat the trust as a QTIP trust for tax purposes, a gift to the trust is eligible for the marital deduction and is not taxable. It does not use up any of the donor’s gift tax exclusion. That flexibility to make a transfer today and decide later whether it uses any lifetime exemption is something most people don’t know about. A QTIP can also protect the recipient spouse and the principal from any creditors.

There are conditions and limitations to this strategy. If the QTIP election is not made, all net trust income must be distributed to the beneficiary spouse. There’s also no flexibility for the trust income to be accumulated or distributed directly to descendants.

The property over which the QTIP election is made is included in the estate of the surviving spouse.

The election can be made over the entire asset or only a portion of the asset transferred to the trust. The option to apply only a portion of the transfer makes it more tax efficient. For generation skipping-trust purposes, an election can be made to use the transferor spouse’s GST exemption when the decision about the QTIP election is made.

QTIPs are not the solution for everyone, but they may be the best option for many people while the people in Washington, D.C. determine the immediate future of the estate tax.

There are many Americans who are moving forward with making gifts using the current gift tax exclusion, using spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs). However, the QTIP elections remain a way to hedge against the risk of being on the hook for a substantial gift tax, if there is a reduction in the federal estate tax exemptions.

Speak with an estate planning attorney to learn if a QTIP or another type of trust is appropriate for you. QTIP trusts can help avoid estate taxes, but take note that these are complex planning strategies, and they must work in tandem with the rest of your estate plan.

If you are interested in learning more about QTIP trusts, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: Financial Advisor (May 24, 2021) “How Certain Trusts Soften The Blow Of Estate Tax Increases”

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels

A SLAT allows You to Protect Assets

June 1, 2021

Interest in SLATs, or Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts, has picked up as the new administration eyes possible revenue sources from estate and gift taxes. According to a recent article titled “What Advisors Should Know About SLATs” from U.S. News & World Report, even if no changes to exemption levels happen now, the current federal lifetime gift and estate tax exclusion of $11.7 million will expire in 2026. When that happens, the exemption will revert to the pre-2018 level of about $6 million, adjusted for inflation. First, what is a SLAT? It’s an estate planning strategy where one spouse gifts assets to an irrevocable trust for the benefit of the other spouse. A SLAT allows you to protect assets by removing them from a joint estate, but the donor spouse may still indirectly retain access to the assets. The SLAT typically also benefits a secondary recipient, usually the couple’s children.

It’s important to work with an estate planning attorney who is knowledgeable about this type of planning and tax law to ensure that the SLAT follows all of the rules. It is possible for a SLAT that is poorly created to be rejected by the IRS, so experienced counsel is a must.

The attorney and the couple need to look at how much wealth the family has and how much the family members will need to enjoy their quality of life for the rest of their lives. The funds placed in the SLAT are, ideally, funds that neither of the couple will need to access.

If a donor spouse can be approved for life insurance, that’s a good asset to place inside a SLAT. Tax-deferred assets are also good assets for SLATs. Trust tax rates can be very high. If securities are placed into the trust and they pay dividends, taxes must be paid. When life insurance pays out, the proceeds are estate-tax and income-tax free.

SLATs also protect assets from creditors.

There are pitfalls to SLATs, which is why an experienced estate planning attorney is so important. Married couples with large estates may set up separate SLATs for each other, but they must take into consideration the “reciprocal trust doctrine.” SLATs cannot be funded with identical assets and they cannot be set up at the same time. The IRS will collapse trusts that violate this rule. One SLAT can be done one year, and the second SLAT done the following year, and they should be funded with different assets.

There’s also a trade-off: while the SLAT gets assets out of the estate, they will not receive a step-up in basis at the time of the donor spouse’s death. Basis step-ups occur when the deceased spouse’s share in the cost basis of assets is stepped up to their value on the date of death.

Divorce or the death of the recipient spouse means the donor spouse loses access to the SLAT’s assets.

The SLAT requires coordination between the estate planning attorney and the financial advisor, so anyone considering this strategy should act now so their attorney has enough time to take the family’s entire estate plan into account. There also needs to be a third-party trustee, someone who is not the recipient and not related or subordinate to the recipient.

Assets don’t have to be placed into the SLATs immediately after they are created, so there is time to figure out what the couple wants to put into the SLAT. A SLAT can be beneficial because it allows you to protect assets, however, forgetting to fund the SLAT, like neglecting to fund any other trust, defeats the purpose of the trust.

If you would like to read more about SLATs and other types of tools to protect assets, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: U.S. News & World Report (May 3, 2021) “What Advisors Should Know About SLATs”

Tax Liabilities when a Loved One Dies

May 17, 2021

Sooner or later, someone has to resolve the tax liabilities when a loved one dies. It is usually a family member who faces this task. For one woman, the unexpected passing of her father in early 2018 left her the task of filing his 2017 return and the family’s estate planning attorney filed the 2018 return through the father’s estate. The family is still waiting for the 2017 tax refund from the IRS, and needs to resolve a stimulus check for $1,200 her family received last spring that had to be sent back.

Many families are facing similar situations, as reported in this recent article “Death and taxes: Americans grapple with filing the final tax return for deceased relatives in a pandemic year” from USA Today. Survivors are anxious about complex tax issues at the same time they are in mourning for a loved one.

The final tax return uses IRS Form 1040, the same one that would have been used if the taxpayer were living. The major difference: the word “deceased” is written after the taxpayer’s name.

If the taxpayer was married, the surviving spouse may file a joint return for the year of death. For two years after the taxpayer’s death, the surviving spouse may file as a qualifying widow or widower, which lets them continue to use the same tax brackets that apply to married-filing-jointly returns.

The larger the estate and income for a loved one, the more complicated taxes after death can become. Estate planning attorneys recommend naming an executor in the will and tasking them with taking care of final taxes.

The estate tax is paid on assets owned at the time of death. As of this writing, estates valued at more than $11.7 million (or $23.4 million per married couple), pay a 40% federal tax, in addition to state estate or inheritance taxes, if there are any. It is generally expected that the coming months will see a large reduction in the federal estate tax exemption.

The deadline to file a final return is the tax filing deadline of the year following the loved one’s death. The executor or administrator is usually the person who signs the tax return, although a surviving spouse signs the joint return. If there is no executor, whoever is responsible for filing the return signs it and should note that they are signing on behalf of the decedent. For a joint return, the spouse signs the return and writes “filing as surviving spouse” in the space for the other spouse’s signature.

There’s one more step if a return is due. If the deceased is owed money, the IRS Form 1310 should be used. That’s the Statement of a Person Claiming Refund Due a Deceased Taxpayer. The IRS says that surviving spouses signing a joint return don’t have to file this form, but tax experts think it’s a good idea to try to proactively prevent any delays.

If there are tax liabilities when a loved one dies, the tax bill is to be settled by the estate’s executor. If there are insufficient funds to pay the federal income and estate taxes, relatives are not responsible for the remaining balance.

Note that the executor may be held liable if the assets are distributed before paying the taxes, or if the debts of the estate are paid before taxes are paid. The same is true if the executor is aware of the insufficient funds and inability to pay the taxes but spends assets anyway.

Talk with an estate planning attorney about the taxes that will need to be paid from an estate. You don’t want to leave a legacy of tax pain for the family. If you would like to learn more about tasks to complete when a loved one dies, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: USA Today (April 22, 2021) “Death and taxes: Americans grapple with filing the final tax return for deceased relatives in a pandemic year”

Managing an Inherited Retirement Account

May 5, 2021

The rules for managing an inherited retirement account are complicated—just as complicated as the rules for having 401(k)s and IRA to begin with. Mistakes can be hard to undo, warns the article “Here’s how to handle the complicated rules for an inherited 401(k) or IRA” from CNBC.

The 2019 Secure Act changed how inherited tax deferred assets are treated after the original owner’s death. The options depend upon the relationship between the owner and the heir. The ability to stretch out distributions across the heir’s lifetime if the owner died on or after January 1, 2020 ended for most heirs. Exceptions are the spouse, certain disabled beneficiaries, or minor children of the decedent. Otherwise, those accounts must be depleted within ten years.

Non-spouses with flexibility include minor children. That’s all well and fine, but once the minor child turns 18 (in most states), the 10-year rule kicks in and the individual has 10 years to empty the retirement account. Before that time, the minor child must take annual required minimum distributions (RMDs) based on their own life expectancy.

These required withdrawals typically begin when a retiree reaches age 72, and the amount is based on the account owner’s anticipated lifespan.

Beneficiaries who are chronically ill or disabled, or who are not more than ten years younger than the decedent, may take distributions based on their own life expectancy. They are not subject to the ten- year rule.

Beneficiaries subject to that ten-year depletion rule should create a strategy, including creating an Inherited IRA and transferring the funds to it. If the inherited account is a Roth or a traditional IRA, the process is slightly different. Distributions from a Roth IRA are generally tax-free, and traditional IRA distributions are taxed when withdrawals occur. One point about Roths—if you inherit a Roth that’s less than five years old, any earnings withdrawn will be subject to taxes, but the contributed after-tax amounts remain tax-free.

If an heir ends up with a retirement account via an estate, versus being the named beneficiary on the account, the account must be depleted within five years, if the original owner had not started taking RMDs. If RMDs were underway, the heir would need to keep those withdrawals going as if the original owner continued to live.

For spouses, there are more options. First, roll the money into your own IRA and follow the standard RMD rules. At age 72, start taking required withdrawals based on your own life expectancy. If you don’t need the income, you can leave the money in the account, where it can continue to grow. However, if you are not yet age 59½, you may be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you take money from the account. In that case, put the money into an Inherited IRA account, with yourself as the beneficiary.

IRAs and 401(k)s are complicated and managing an inherited retirement account can be just as complicated. Speak with your estate planning attorney to make an informed decision when creating an estate plan, so your inherited assets will work with, not against, your overall strategy.

If you would like to learn more about managing inherited retirement accounts and how to incorporate them into your broader estate planning, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: CNBC (April 11, 2021) “Here’s how to handle the complicated rules for an inherited 401(k) or IRA”

Revise your Planning with a Second Marriage

April 19, 2021

It is wise to revise your planning with a second marriage. The assets you and your second spouse bring into the marriage need to be carefully considered when revising your estate plan, says a recent article “Value of an Estate Plan Review With a Second Marriage” from Mondaq. If there are children from one or both partner’s prior marriages, those too need to be considered. If you plan on having children together, the estate plan needs to include this as well.

The best time to prepare this new estate plan would be before the wedding. This way, you can both go forward with the wedding and celebration with clear minds and hearts.

Start with a complete inventory of all assets and debts. List financial accounts, including investments, savings and checking accounts. Real estate and any personal assets, pensions and tax deferred retirement accounts should be included.

Review your wills, trusts, health care plans and directives, powers of attorney and any other estate planning documents at this time.

There may be assets that need to be retitled, and beneficiaries on all assets that permit designated beneficiaries should be updated at this time. Check to be sure a prior spouse is not the beneficiary of any life insurance or pensions. Any debts or liabilities that one partner brings to the marriage should be reviewed at this time. Comingling accounts and marriage will make both spouses responsible for each other’s debts, which should be discussed candidly.

Based on the inventory, one or the other partner may wish to have a prenuptial agreement to protect their individual financial interests during a second marriage. A prenuptial agreement may also be used to waive respective rights to each other’s property. These agreements are also used to serve as a means of retaining control of a business and defining premarital assets and debt.

When children are involved, decisions need to be made as to how assets are to be divided. Does one spouse want to leave their assets to their own children or to all of the children?

One way of addressing children in a second marriage is to create a separate marital trust to ensure that the new spouse receives the share of the assets you want them to have, while preserving your children’s inheritance. In the case of IRAs, it may be prudent to split them into separate IRAs among your spouse and children to protect the children’s inheritance.

When naming new beneficiaries, be aware that your new spouse may have mandatory rights to certain assets, such as qualified retirement plans. The only person who can inherit a Health Savings Account (HSA) without it becoming taxable, is your spouse. Remember to change this from your former spouse to the new spouse. Naming your children as the beneficiary would cause the account to be taxable on your death.

There could be significant financial consequences if you fail to revise your planning with a second marriage. An estate planning attorney who has worked with second and subsequent marriages can help facilitate a discussion about structuring an estate plan. Working with a professional who knows how these situations are resolved can be a great help in getting the process started and keeping it moving forward.

If you would like to learn more about estate planning and blended families, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: Mondaq (March 2, 2021) “Value of an Estate Plan Review With a Second Marriage”

revise your planning with a second marriage

Is a SLAT right for your Family?

March 16, 2021

A SLAT is a type of irrevocable trust that can only be used by married couples for the benefit of a spouse, children, or other beneficiaries. Is a SLAT right for your family? The recent article titled “Should a SLAT Be Part Of Your Estate Planning?” from Forbes examines when a SLAT works for a family, and when it doesn’t.

A SLAT works well while your spouse is alive. They have access to it and the assets it contains, since they are the beneficiary. As of this writing, up to $11,700,000 of assets can be removed from a taxable estate using your federal estate tax exemption, while your spouse continues to have access to the assets.

Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it? However, there are drawbacks. If your spouse dies, you lose access to the assets. They will pass to the remainder beneficiaries in the trust, typically children, but they can be other beneficiaries of your choice.

If you and your spouse divorce, the spouse is still a beneficiary of the SLAT. Ask your estate planning attorney if this is something they can build into the SLAT for your family, but be mindful that if the attorney is representing both spouses for estate planning, there will be ethical considerations that could get tricky.

What about a SLAT for each spouse? If you and your spouse both establish SLATs to benefit each other, you run the risk of the “reciprocal trust doctrine.” The IRS could take the position that the trusts cancel each other out, and rule that the only reason for the SLAT was to remove taxable assets from your estate.

The SLATs need to be different from each other in more than a few ways. Your estate planning attorney will need to develop this with you. A few ways to structure two SLATs:

Create them at different times. The more time between their creation, the better.
Consider establishing the trusts in different states.
Have different trustees.
Vary the distribution rules for the surviving spouse and the distribution rules upon the death of the second spouse. For instance, one spouse’s trust could hold the assets in lifetime trusts for the children, while the other spouse’s trust could terminate, and assets be distributed to the children when they reach age 40.

So is a SLAT right for your family? The SLAT is an especially useful way to address tax liability. If you have not maxed out lifetime gifts in 2020, now is the time to start this process. December 2025, when the federal estate tax exemption reverts back to $5 million, will be here faster than you think. If the country needs to find revenue quickly, that change may come even sooner. Tax reform that occurs in 2021 is not likely to be retroactive to January 1, 2021, but there are no guarantees.

If you would like to learn more about estate strategies such as a SLAT, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: Forbes (Feb. 16, 2021) “Should a SLAT Be Part Of Your Estate Planning?”

Update Your Plan to Protect Spouse and Children

April 22, 2020

Without an updated estate plan, a surviving spouse is left with a world of trouble, as described in the article “Protect Your Spouse and Children by Updating Your Estate Plan” from The National Law Review. Consider an update to your estate plan to protect your spouse and children.

The documents that need to be updated beginning with the will. In one example, a will from a prior marriage left all of a person’s assets to their prior spouse and siblings. Under New York and New Jersey state law, gifts to prior spouses are automatically revoked by law. What does that mean? All assets pass to the alternate beneficiary, who is named in the first will. For this particular spouse, that means that all the deceased spouse’s assets went to the siblings and not the new spouse.

In New Jersey and New York, spouses can elect against a will to claim a share of the deceased spouse’s assets, but this only applies to a third of their assets. That’s far short of what a spouse usually wants for their surviving spouse and children.

The only thing worse than an out-of-date will is no will at all. In another case, a spouse died without having a will. The law in New Jersey provides that in this situation, most assets will go to the surviving spouse, but almost a quarter will go to the deceased’s parents, if they are still living. If there are children from a prior marriage, then a little more than half of the estate will go to the surviving spouse.

The other bad part of having an out-of-date will almost always means that beneficiaries have not been updated. Here’s where things can get even worse.

Assets that have designated beneficiaries do not pass through probate and go directly to the beneficiaries. How bad this can be, depends upon what assets are owned with a designated beneficiary, and how long ago the beneficiaries were named. In some states, prior spouses are removed as beneficiaries by the operation of law, but that is not always the case. An estate planning attorney will be able to explain your state’s laws.

Here’s one more case where a failure to update estate plans caused real hardship for a family. A niece, and not the new spouse, was named as the beneficiary of the deceased’s IRA, which was a large asset. Several hundred thousand dollars went to the niece, instead of going to the man’s new wife and child. He simply never updated his beneficiary designation.

While 401(k)s are always left to the spouse under ERISA, unless spousal consent is given for another beneficiary to receive the 401(k), IRAs are given to whoever is named as a beneficiary. The same goes for life insurance policies, investment accounts, bank accounts and any asset with a named beneficiary.

Speak with your estate planning attorney now to be sure that your current will still reflects your estate planning goals. If you have remarried, welcomed a new child to the family, or had any other major life events, update your estate plan to ensure your spouse and children are protected. Don’t wait until it’s too late. If you are interested in learning more about updating your current estate plan, please visit our previous posts.

Reference: The National Law Review (March 16, 2020) “Protect Your Spouse and Children by Updating Your Estate Plan”

Category: Spouse

You can be POA and Joint Account Owner

QTIP Trusts Help avoid Estate Taxes

A SLAT allows You to Protect Assets

Tax Liabilities when a Loved One Dies

Managing an Inherited Retirement Account

Revise your Planning with a Second Marriage

Is a SLAT right for your Family?

Update Your Plan to Protect Spouse and Children

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