Family Security Law Group, APC

Should I Leave an Inheritance to My Kids?

“Deciding whether to leave an inheritance for your children impacts the amount you save, the retirement plans you choose and how you take qualified retirement plan distributions. However, beyond your desire to leave some wealth to your children (or not), there are some essential personal financial issues to consider.”

Some retirees make a big mistake and give their retirement savings away without considering their own income needs. Before you make gifts to others, take a look at how much to spend on yourself. Determine how much you need to save and how much you can withdraw each year, when you retire.

Investopedia’s article, “Challenges in Leaving Inheritance to Children,” says to consider the effect of inflation and taxes and maintain a diversified portfolio of growth and income investments to help your portfolio keep pace with inflation.

The biggest unknowns with retirement income and children's inheritance are unexpected illness and high healthcare costs. Government programs are frequently not helpful in paying for nursing homes and other forms of long-term medical care. Medicare covers nursing home stays for a very limited period. Medicaid mandates that you spend nearly all of your own money, before it will pay for long-term care. You can’t just move assets to family members to qualify for Medicaid, because the program restricts benefits, if asset transfers were made within five years prior to applying for Medicaid. The rules are tricky, when it comes to eligibility.

You can protect your assets from the costs of catastrophic illness with a long-term care insurance policy. However, these policies can be very expensive and have coverage limitations. Consider them carefully.

What happens if you outlive your retirement funds? With longer life expectancies, it's crucial to try to manage retirement-plan withdrawals, so you do not deplete all of your assets during your lifetime.

You could purchase an immediate annuity with some retirement money to ensure a guaranteed amount, for at least as long as you live. Some pension and retirement plans may allow you to stretch payments over single or joint life expectancies, rather than receive the proceeds as a lump sum.

If you expect to inherit assets from your parents, you may be in a better position financially than someone who doesn’t expect to receive an inheritance. Note that certain inherited assets, like stocks and mutual funds, are eligible for a favorable tax treatment called a step-up in basis. If you are leaving assets to others, this could mean significant savings for heirs.

You may also want to set up a trust to control distributions from the estate to the surviving spouse and children. If you or your spouse have children from previous relationships but don't have a prenuptial agreement, trusts can ensure that specific assets are passed to designated children.

You may share your wealth with others by gifting assets, creating a trust, deferring income or purchasing life insurance or tax-deferred variable annuities.

Talk to a Thousand Oaks estate planning attorney at Family Security Law Group, APC to determine the best options for your circumstances.

Reference: Investopedia (November 26, 2018) “Challenges in Leaving Inheritance to Children”

What Do I Need to Know About ABLE Accounts?

“What is an ABLE account and who is eligible?”

Millions of Americans with disabilities and their families depend on public benefits to help provide income, health care, food and housing assistance. Eligibility for assistance through Supplemental Security Income, SNAP and Medicaid is based upon a resource test, so disabled individuals seeking benefits are typically limited to no more than $2,000 in savings or assets. This can present a difficult problem.

The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) was created as a way to create a tax-advantaged savings tool for individuals with disabilities and their families.

nj.com’s article, “ABLE accounts–A tax advantaged tool for special needs planning,” advises that when used correctly, this overlooked savings account may allow families to build a small nest egg, without affecting eligibility for public program benefits.

An ABLE 529 account is designed to be a savings or investment account to supplement public benefits. It can be a powerful strategy for individuals, who previously were unable to build supplemental funds outside of a trust for their needs. An ABLE account is funded with after-tax contributions that can grow tax-free, when used for a qualified disability expense. The account owner is also the beneficiary and contributions can be made from any person including the account beneficiary, friends, and family.

The ABLE account is available to individuals with significant disabilities, whose age of onset of disability was before they turned 26. A person could be over the age of 26 but must have had an age of onset before their 26th birthday.

Contributions are restricted to $15,000 per year. Because the ABLE account is connected to the 529 plan for education, the total contribution limit is based upon the individual state’s limit for 529 plans. Individuals can have up to $100,000 in an ABLE account, without impacting SSI eligibility. The first $100,000 also does not count toward the $2,000 resource restriction.

A frequently asked question is whether to use an ABLE account or a Special Needs Trust for planning purposes. ABLE are subject to certain limitations that make it impossible, or at least ill advised, to use them instead of a Special Needs Trust. Remember that ABLE accounts can only receive $15,000 in deposits each year, but, in most cases, Special Needs Trusts can receive much larger contributions in a year, once they are funded. This is an important difference for parents who want to leave more substantial assets to their child when they die but don’t want to jeopardize the child’s eligibility for critical services. In that situation, a Special Needs Trust may be more desirable.

When the beneficiary of the ABLE account passes away, any leftover funds in the account are typically reimbursed to the state to defray the costs of providing services during the beneficiary’s life. However, that’s different than a properly drafted Special Needs Trust.

In 2019, ABLE account owners who work, but don’t have an employer-sponsored retirement account, can now save up to $12,140 in additional savings from their earnings.

Ask your Thousand Oaks estate planning attorney at Family Security Law Group, APC about possibly coordinating an ABLE account with a Special Needs Trust.

Reference: nj.com (April 20, 2019) “ABLE accounts – A tax advantaged tool for special needs planning”

What Are Some Advantages of Making Lifetime Gifts?

“You probably give to others each year, such as for birthdays and Christmas gifts. Gifting can be done for other reasons, including during life or as bequests at death. The reasons for doing so could be to accomplish nontax or tax goals.”

There are several non-tax advantages of making lifetime gifts. One is that you’re able to see the recipient or “donee” enjoy your gift. It might give you satisfaction to help your children achieve financial independence or have fewer financial concerns.

WMUR’s recent article, “Money Matters: Lifetime non-charitable giving,” explains that lifetime giving means you dictate who gets your property. Remember, if you die without a will, the intestacy laws of the state will dictate who gets what. With a will, you can decide how you want your property distributed after your death. However, it’s true that even with a will, you won’t really know how the property is distributed, because a beneficiary could disclaim an inheritance. With lifetime giving, you have more control over how your assets are distributed.

At your death, your property may go through probate. Lifetime giving will help reduce probate and administration costs, since lifetime gifts are typically not included in your probate estate at death.  Unlike probate, lifetime gifts are private.

Let’s discuss some of the tax advantages. First, a properly structured gifting program can save income and estate taxes. A gift isn’t taxable income to the donee, but any income earned by the gift property or capital gain subsequent to the gift usually is taxable. The donor may have to pay state and/or federal transfer taxes on the gift. There may be state gift tax, state generation-skipping transfer tax, federal gift and estate taxes, as well as federal generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax.

A big reason for lifetime giving is to remove appreciating assets from your estate (i.e., one that’s expected to increase in value over time). If you give the asset away, any future appreciation in value is removed from your estate. The taxes today may be significantly less than what they would be in the future, after the asset’s value has increased. Note that lifetime giving results in the carryover of your basis in the property to the donee. If the asset is left to the donee at your death, it will usually receive a step-up in value to a new basis (usually the fair market value at the date of your death). Therefore, if the donee plans to sell the asset, she may have a smaller gain by inheriting it at your death, rather than as a gift during your life.

You can also give by paying tuition to an education institution or medical expenses to a medical care provider directly on behalf of the donee. These transfers are exempt from any federal gift and estate tax.

Remember that the federal annual gift tax exclusion lets you to give $15,000 (for the 2019 year) per donee to an unlimited number of donees, without any federal gift and estate tax or federal GST tax (it applies only to gifts of present interest).

Prior to making a gift, discuss your strategy with a Thousand Oaks estate planning attorney at Family Security Law Group, APC to be sure that it matches your estate plan goals.

Reference: WMUR (April 18, 2019) “Money Matters: Lifetime non-charitable giving”

What Happens to the “Stretch IRA” with the New Law?

“New legislation that aims to give workers greater opportunities to save for retirement, may put the kibosh on a strategy for passing large individual retirement accounts to heirs.”

Congress’ House Ways and Means Committee has passed a bill known as the Secure Act. This bill would require employers with a 401(k) plan to allow long-term part-time workers to participate. It would also create a $500 tax credit for small companies that start retirement plans with automatic enrollment.

CNBC reports, in its recent article “Congress may gut the 'stretch IRA' that wealthy people love,” that the bill includes a provision that would force non-spouse beneficiaries to draw down inherited retirement accounts within 10 years of the original owner's death.

This provision could discourage the use of a "stretch IRA." This strategy allows younger heirs to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) from the inherited account, based on their own much longer life expectancy. They receive the advantage of "stretching" the IRA's tax-deferred growth over many years, while taking smaller RMDs.

If you inherit an IRA from someone who is not your spouse, you're now generally required to begin taking RMDs based on your life expectancy by December 31, after the year the original account owner died. However, the House version of the bill would force a distribution of the account's value within 10 years. The Senate version would distribute the account in five years, if the beneficiary isn’t a spouse and if the account value exceeds $400,000 as of the date of death.

Both versions of the legislation have an exception, if the beneficiary is the surviving spouse, a disabled or chronically ill person, an individual who is no more than 10 years younger than the account owner, or the minor child of the account owner.

The stretch IRA is most attractive to young heirs of larger accounts. They have years of tax-deferred growth ahead of them, and they must only take a small distribution each year. However, an accelerated distribution over a much shorter period of time, would mean a big tax liability.

There are a few alternative strategies that IRA owners might look into to minimize taxes, while passing on the account to a non-spouse heir, if the bill passes. A charitable remainder trust lets investors leave assets to a charitable organization and to a beneficiary. The beneficiary would get income from the assets for a specified time, and then the charity would get whatever’s left. You’d have to name the trust as the beneficiary of the IRA, which can cause tax issues, if done incorrectly. Be sure to work with an estate planning attorney, if you're considering this.

With life insurance, you could get more money tax-free without any RMD or complexity, and just bypass the whole system. The death benefit of a life insurance policy is typically excluded from the recipient's gross income, and your premium dollar also goes further.

Reference: CNBC (April 11, 2019) “Congress may gut the 'stretch IRA' that wealthy people love”

What are Common Mistakes that People Make with Beneficiary Designations?

“You may be surprised at how easy it is to make an expensive mistake with your beneficiary designations.”

Many people don’t understand that their will doesn’t control who inherits all of their assets when they pass away. Some of a person’s assets pass by beneficiary designation. That’s accomplished by completing a form with the company that holds the asset and naming who will inherit the asset, upon your death.

Kiplinger’s recent article, “Beneficiary Designations: 5 Critical Mistakes to Avoid,” explains that assets including life insurance, annuities and retirement accounts (think 401(k)s,
IRAs, 403bs and similar accounts) all pass by beneficiary designation. Many financial companies also let you name beneficiaries on non-retirement accounts, known as TOD (transfer on death) or POD (pay on death) accounts.

Naming a beneficiary can be a good way to make certain your family will get assets directly. However, these beneficiary designations can also cause a host of problems. Make sure that your beneficiary designations are properly completed and given to the financial company, because mistakes can be costly. The article looks at five critical mistakes to avoid when dealing with your beneficiary designations:

1. Failing to name a beneficiary. Many people never name a beneficiary for retirement accounts or life insurance. If you don’t name a beneficiary for life insurance or retirement accounts, the financial company has it owns rules about where the assets will go after you die. For life insurance, the proceeds will usually be paid to your estate. For retirement benefits, if you’re married, your spouse will most likely get the assets. If you’re single, the retirement account will likely be paid to your estate, which has negative tax ramifications. When an estate is the beneficiary of a retirement account, the assets must be paid out of the retirement account within five years of death. This means an acceleration of the deferred income tax—which must be paid earlier, than would have otherwise been necessary.
2. Failing to consider special circumstances. Not every person should receive an asset directly. These are people like minors, those with specials needs, or people who can’t manage assets or who have creditor issues. Minor children aren’t legally competent, so they can’t claim the assets. A court-appointed guardian will claim and manage the money, until the minor turns 18. Those with special needs who get assets directly, will lose government benefits because once they receive the inheritance directly, they’ll own too many assets to qualify. People with financial issues or creditor problems can lose the asset through mismanagement or debts. Ask your attorney about creating a trust to be named as the beneficiary.
3. Designating the wrong beneficiary. Sometimes a person will complete beneficiary designation forms incorrectly. For example, there can be multiple people in a family with similar names, and the beneficiary designation form may not be specific. People also change their names in marriage or divorce. Assets owners can also assume a person’s legal name that can later be incorrect. These mistakes can result in delays in payouts, and in a worst-case scenario of two people with similar names, can mean litigation.
4. Failing to update your beneficiaries. Since there are life changes, make sure your beneficiary designations are updated on a regular basis.
5. Failing to review beneficiary designations with your attorney. Beneficiary designations are part of your overall financial and estate plan. Speak with your estate planning attorney to determine the best approach for your specific situation.

Beneficiary designations are designed to make certain that you have the final say over who will get your assets when you die. Take the time to carefully and correctly choose your beneficiaries and periodically review those choices and make the necessary updates to stay in control of your money.

Reference: Kiplinger (April 5, 2019) “Beneficiary Designations: 5 Critical Mistakes to Avoid”

How Do I Get My Mom’s Affairs in Order?

“A few simple steps now, will greatly ease many of the transitions you are likely to face in the coming years.”

What can you do to make sure your mother’s financial affairs are in proper order?

The Monterey Herald’s recent article, “Financial planning: Making sure Mom is taken care of,” says to first make sure that she has her basic estate planning documents in place. She should have a will and an Advance Health Care Directive. Talk to an experienced estate planning attorney to make sure these documents fully reflect your mother’s desires. An Advance Health Care Directive lets her name a person to make health care decisions on her behalf, if she becomes incapacitated. This decision-making authority is called a Power of Attorney for Health Care, and the person receiving the authority is known as the agent.

Based on the way in which the form is written, the agent can have broad authority, including the ability to consent to or refuse medical treatment, surgical procedures and artificial nutrition or hydration. The form also allows a person to leave instructions for health care, such as whether or not to be resuscitated, have life prolonged artificially, or to receive treatment to alleviate pain, even if it hastens death. To limit these instructions in any specific way, talk to an attorney.

Another option is to create a living trust, if the value of her estate is significant. In some states, estates worth more than a certain amount are subject to probate—a costly, lengthy and public process. Smaller value estates usually can avoid probate. When calculating the value of an estate, you can exclude several types of assets, including joint tenancy property, property that passes outright to a surviving spouse, assets that pass outside of probate to named beneficiaries (such as pensions, IRAs, and life insurance), multiple party accounts or pay on death (POD) accounts and assets owned in trust, including a revocable trust.  You should also conduct a full inventory of your parent’s accounts, including where they’re held and how they’re titled. Update the named beneficiaries on IRAs, retirement plans and life insurance policies.

Some adult children will have their parent name them as a joint owner on their checking account. This allows you greater flexibility to settle outstanding obligations, when she passes away. Remember that a financial power of attorney won’t work here, because it will lapse upon your mother’s death. However, note that any asset held by joint owners are subject to the creditors of each joint owner. Do not add your daughter as a joint owner, if she has marital, financial, or legal problems!

You also shouldn’t put your name as a joint owner of a brokerage account—especially one with low-cost basis investments. One of the benefits of transferring wealth, is the step-up in cost basis assets receive at time of death. Being named as the joint owner of an account will give you control over the assets in the account—but you won’t get the step up in basis, when your mother passes.

Reference: Monterey Herald (March 20, 2019) “Financial planning: Making sure Mom is taken care of”

Should Older Millennials Buy Life Insurance?

“Let's break it down on why millennials need life insurance and how companies are starting to understand this trend.”

We're all going to die someday. That’s one of the only certainties in life, along with taxes. However, a recent study by Budget Insurance found that 82% of millennials don't know the purpose of life insurance—despite the fact they’re aging, starting families and dealing with more complex financial situations.

Forbes’ article, “Why Older Millennials Need To Start Taking Life Insurance Seriously,” notes that, although most millennials may not have given life insurance much thought before, it's now time to begin taking life insurance and other estate planning more seriously. To help with this, more companies are starting to take millennials seriously, when it comes to financial matters. The result? It's getting easier than ever before to get life insurance.

Life insurance is used to protect your family financially, in case of your death. That is important for millennials who are starting families that depend on them financially.

According to Pew Research, 60% of families depend on dual incomes and just 31% of families rely on a single income.  A total of 91% of families in the U.S. require the income of at least one spouse to survive. However, what happens if one (or both) die? That's where life insurance comes into play.

Because millennials are still relatively young, getting life insurance is very cost effective. In addition, for the vast majority of millennials, a simple term life insurance policy will do the job.

Term life policies are very inexpensive and can be a financial relief, if they’re ever actually needed.

It's possible to get a $1,000,000 term life insurance policy for about $40 per month, depending on your age and health. That is quite a bit of insurance for little expense.

With the increase in millennials who require life insurance, many insurance companies are making buying life insurance very easy.

These companies have online or app-based solutions that focus on speed and ease of use. These companies leverage technology and keep human interaction to a level that most millennials like.

Reference: Forbes (January 26, 2019) “Why Older Millennials Need To Start Taking Life Insurance Seriously”

Is There a Market for My Long-Term Care Insurance Policy?

“Some people have life insurance policies that have long-term care riders that allow them to access up to the death benefit for long-term care needs. These might be able to be sold through a life settlement.”

There is a market to sell life insurance through what is known as a life settlement. However, there’s no such market for long-term care policies.

A life settlement is the sale of a life insurance policy to a third party. Usually the owner of the policy receives an amount that’s valued at more than the policy's cash surrender value, but less than its face value or death benefit.

nj.com’s recent article asks, “Can I sell my long-term care insurance policy?” The article explains that HMOs typically don’t include the costs of long-term care or skilled nursing care.

However, some people purchase life insurance policies that contain long-term care riders. This type of policy lets the owner tap into the death benefit for long-term care needs. The policy owner may be able to sell this insurance through a life settlement.

When contemplating the sale of your life insurance policy, you should be certain that you don’t need the life insurance for legacy, estate planning needs or income needs.

Remember that HMOs don’t cover any potential needs for skilled nursing care. A person who moves along the continuum of care to an assisted living facility will need the long-term care insurance.

Be sure to look over the policy details. Long-term care insurance policies, once they’re employed, usually no longer require you to pay the premium.

According to the Genworth Cost of Care annual report, the costs for assisted living facilities in New Jersey, for example, can average over $6,000 a month, while nursing homes average $10,600 per month. This is a significant ongoing expense.

Only a long-term care insurance policy is going to cover the skilled assistance a person will need when she’s not able to do daily living activities, like bathing, toileting, transferring, eating, continence and getting dressed.

Medicare will only pay for up to 100 days in a skilled facility after a hospital stay.

Reference: nj.com (May 21, 2019) “Can I sell my long-term care insurance policy?”

Inherited IRA Basics

“Inherited IRAs and 401(k)s can be a great vehicle for passing assets from these accounts to non-spousal beneficiaries.”

Inherited individual retirement accounts have been a common way to let non-spousal beneficiaries inherit an IRA account and allow the account to continue to grow on a tax-deferred basis in the future. These rules were changed in 2007 to allow non-spousal beneficiaries of 401(k) and similar defined contribution retirement plans to treat these accounts the same way.

Investopedia’s article, “Inherited IRA and 401(k) Rules Explained,” says spousal beneficiaries of an IRA have the option of taking the account and managing it, as if it was their own. This includes the calculation of required minimum distributions (RMDs). For non-spousal beneficiaries, an inherited IRA account can give them a few options, including the ability to stretch the IRA over time by letting it continue to grow tax-deferred.

IRA account holders who want to leave their accounts to non-spousal beneficiaries should enlist the help of an estate planning attorney who understands the complex rules surrounding these accounts. The account beneficiaries must be careful to ensure they don’t inadvertently trigger a taxable event.

The beneficiaries of an inherited IRA can open an inherited IRA account, taking a distribution (which will be taxable), or disclaiming all or part of the inheritance (causing the funds to pass to other eligible beneficiaries). Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and SEP IRAs can be left to non-spousal beneficiaries in this way. A 2015 rule change says the creditor protection previously afforded an inherited IRA was ruled void by the U.S. Supreme Court. Inherited IRA accounts can’t be commingled with your other IRA accounts, but the beneficiary can name their own beneficiaries upon their death.

The rules for RMDs for inherited IRAs or inherited 401(k)s are based on the age of the original account holder at the time of his or her death. If the account holder wasn’t yet 70½—the age at which RMDs must start—the beneficiary can wait until they reach age 70½ to begin taking RMDs. The required percentages will be based on the IRS table in effect for their age at the time.

If the original account holder had reached age 70½ and was taking RMDs, then the beneficiary must continue taking a distribution each year.  However, the RMDs will be based on their age, not the age of the original account holder. As a result, the distribution amounts will be less than those of the original account holders (assuming the beneficiary is younger). This lets him or her to stretch out the account via tax-deferred growth over time.

These rules are complicated, so work with a Thousand Oaks estate planning attorney at Family Security Law Group, APC to be certain they’re followed to avoid costly errors.

Reference: Investopedia (December 18, 2017) “Inherited IRA and 401(k) Rules Explained”

Have You Saved Enough for Assisted Living?

“According to the 2017 Genworth Cost of Care Survey, a widely used barometer for the industry, the median cost of adult day health care in the United States is $1,517 a month.”

The median cost of adult day health care in our country is more than $1500 a month. It is $3,750 for an assisted living facility, $3,994 for home care services and $4,099 for home health aides.

If you want some privacy, the median cost is $7,148 for a semiprivate room at a nursing home and $8,121 for a private room. That’s expensive! Can you afford it? Wealth Advisor poses this question in its recent article, “Have Clients Planned For Long-Term Care?”

These alarming figures should get you thinking. If you don’t think about the possibility that you may require some form of long-term care services—either a home health aide, an assisted living facility, or a nursing home—then you run the risk of wiping out your entire life’s savings to pay for it, even if it’s a only a short period of time when you or a spouse needs such care.

So, how do you avoid that?

Medicaid isn’t a viable option for most people, because of the relatively low state income thresholds to qualify for the program. One option is to purchase long-term care insurance (LTCi) through a reputable broker or agent. LTC insurance policies typically provide coverage in these situations:

• Home care
• Assisted living facilities
• Nursing homes
• Adult day care
• Hospice care

However, getting a policy isn’t as easy as it may at first appear.

LTC policies can vary quite a bit, based on factors like the insurer, area of the country, and your health status. Find out what benefits will be provided and for what duration. You should also determine the tax implications for your circumstances. Finally, your out-of-pocket cost is a big factor.

It’s best to investigate a LTC insurance policy sooner versus later, because the cost of coverage will only go up as you get older.

Reference: Wealth Advisor (February 16, 2018) “Have Clients Planned For Long-Term Care?”