Your car requires regular servicing in order to maintain its performance and reliability…and so does your estate plan.  Remember all those pamphlets that were sitting in your glove box along with an owners manual you never read, one of them was a recommended schedule for maintenance based on how many miles you drove your car.  At certain times or a specific number of miles, you need to change the oil, replace the brake pads, rotate the tires and so on.  With your car you know if you keep driving it without servicing it, it’s a sure bet your car will let you down (inevitably while it’s raining).  Well, your estate plan is no different.  You may not want to service it  (we all know taking you car in is a pain), but like your car your estate plan is sure to let you down if you do not service it (when your estate plan lets you down, you won’t care if it’s raining).

Your estate plan needs “servicing” or “updating” if it is going to perform the way you want when you need it.  Your estate plan is a snapshot of you, your family, your assets and the tax laws in effect at the time it was created. All of these change over time, thus your plan should change accordingly.  It is unreasonable to expect the simple will and trust written when you were a newlywed to be what you need it to be that you have a growing family, divorced from your former spouse or retired.  In the simplest terms, you cannot draft an estate plan one time to cover your family for all time.  Over the course of your lifetime, your estate plan will need check-ups, maintenance, tweaking and even full revision or replacement (the legal term is “restatement”).  However, if you have the right attorney to do this for you, the servicing will cost you a minimal amount as compared to having to redo a defective plan or far worse having to administer a plan that did not work in the first place.  (Yes that’s right, not only is probate court slow, painful and public, but also it can easily cost you many times over what it would cost to set up a basic living trust plan).

So, how do you know when it’s time to update or service your plan?  The simplest way is to think of it like servicing your car but instead of having more standard mileage checkpoints, your estate plan has event checkpoints.  Generally, any change in your personal, family, financial or health situation will prompt the need for a change.  Additionally any change in the tax laws could prompt a change in your estate plan, which is precisely why you need to be in continuous communication with your attorney!

It’s a good idea to review your estate plan every year.  Set aside a specific time every year (the week after you birthday or anniversary, any month without too many events, two weeks after tax season … you get the idea) to review it.  At Chhokar Law Group, P.C. we do that for you by reviewing your assets every year and restating your trust every two years to make sure no plan is left without “service” resulting in a breakdown of the plan when it’s needed most.

Here are some suggested check-points to alert you when your plan needs “servicing:”

• Marriage, divorce or separation;

• You or your spouse’s health declines;

• Your spouse dies;

• Value of assets changes dramatically;

• Change in business interests;

• You buy real estate;

• Birth or adoption;

• Finances change;

• Parent or relative becomes dependent on you;

• Minor becomes adult;

• Family member dies;

• Federal or state tax laws change;

• You plan to move to a different state;

• Your successor trustee, guardian or administrator moves, becomes ill or resigns; and/or,

• You change your mind – you are the creator of your living trust and can change it

whenever you want.

Remember, as convenient as it would be, you cannot buy a car, never have it serviced and expect it to run like new in ten to fifteen years.  Same with your estate plan, you cannot have it drafted once and then never look at it again expecting it to work exactly how you want when you pass away years down the road.

Now that the Obama administration is in place, the uncertainty regarding the future of the federal estate tax may soon be resolved and that resolution almost certainly includes the estate tax being here to stay. If your estate exceeds the $3.5 million lifetime exclusion you need to be proactive and take steps that will minimize the impact of this tax on your estate or else your estate will be paying the government 45 cents for every dollar above $3.5 million. Certain strategies are particularly attractive when asset values have decreased and interest rates are low, as they are today.

One estate planning technique that can be very effective is the grantor retained annuity trust or GRAT. With this approach, you transfer investments, a business interest or other assets to an irrevocable trust. You then receive annuity payments from the trust for a specified period. At the end of that time, the assets remaining in the trust pass to your named trust beneficiaries. When you transfer assets to the GRAT, you are making a gift for tax purposes, however you are not taxed on the present value of the annuity interest since you are keeping those payments for yourself. Additionally you can use your lifetime gift-tax exclusion, currently $1 million, to avoid or reduce tax on the gift of the trust remainder.

Setting up a GRAT when interest rates are low results in a higher value being assigned to the annuity stream. That, in turn, results in a lower taxable gift of the remainder. An additional benefit occurs when asset values increase again because the future appreciation associated with the trust assets will not be subject to gift tax. As long as you survive the annuity term, the value of the assets you’ve transferred will not be included in your estate.

If you’re like me, you’d have to read that paragraph about 6 time to even comprehend what it means.  So let’s simplify: You take an asset, something you bought a long time ago for not a lot of money and today is worth a whole lot more than you got it for and put it into a special trust, the GRAT.   Now the point is that you want your beneficiaries to get it at some point in the future.  Well, we can give it to the GRAT, but the GRAT has to give you an income stream in return, the annuity.  At the end of the annuity term, the asset in the GRAT isn’t considered part of your estate and therefore not subject to the $3.5 million dollar exclusion.  Nice!

The easiest way to reduce your estate is to simply give pieces of it away.  The gifting strategy for reducing the value of your estate is to make gifts that are protected from tax by the gift-tax annual exclusion, currently $13,000 per recipient per year. Since many asset values have temporarily decreased, you should still look at the glass half-full because it enables you to give away more assets to loved ones on a tax-free basis. Another possibility you might consider is loaning your child money. You will have to charge interest at an IRS-prescribed rate, but that rate is currently low. And, to shrink your estate, you can forgive up to $13,000 of the loan each year, which is the extent of the gift-tax annual exclusion.

These are two of many ways to plan your estate in order to minimize the federal estate tax and prevent the federal government from taking 45% of everything you pass along to your loved ones that exceeds the $3.5 million lifetime exclusion.  To help avoid imposing such a significant tax burden on your family contact our office today (858-384-5757 or info@yourtotalestateplan.com) to schedule an appointment so we can discuss strategies that will work for your family.

What are you planning to give your teenager when he or she turns 18 and legally becomes an adult? A new watch? A car? A deposit for an apartment? A trip to Europe?

Those are all fine gifts, if you can afford to spend for them. But here’s one you may not have thought of … and it won’t cost you a bundle. Take your son or daughter to your attorney’s office and have them prepare a trio of documents: a simple trust or will, a durable power of attorney, and an advanced healthcare directive. Actually, it’s a gift for both of you, because once your child reaches legal age of adulthood, you will no longer be able to automatically make medical and legal decisions for him or her without the appropriate legal documents authorizing you to do so.

If your son becomes ill or injured and cannot handle his own financial affairs, you will not be able to step in for him and conduct business (sign checks, sell assets, etc.) unless he has a trust or a durable power of attorney and has named you as his successor or agent. If he hasn’t, you’ll have to go through the courts … and that will take time, cost money, and restrict you in ways you cannot imagine. (Some financial institutions also require their own forms; make sure you and your child check with each bank, etc.).

If your daughter cannot make her own medical decisions, it will be much easier for you to make them if she has already named you as her agent. And what if she should be so ill or injured that she is placed on life support before you get to the hospital? Unless she has made her wishes known through a legal document, you may not be able to abide by her wishes and have the life support equipment removed without court approval.

Finally, if your adult child should die without a will, the court will distribute his or her assets according to the laws of the state in which they lived … regardless of what you (or they) would have wanted.

Make sure your new adult understands that all of these documents will need to be changed as their life changes including: accumulating more assets, getting married, buying property, having children, etc.

Helping your child get started with this adult responsibility at the moment when he or she becomes an adult is just one more responsibility we have as parents. It fits right in there with how to balance a checkbook, how to handle a credit card, and how to buy insurance.

Chances are that it will be a long time before any of these documents will be needed. But you’ll be sending your child out of the nest with a full layer of protection … just in case.

Much too often I speak to people and they tell me that estate planning is something for the wealthy.  After much contemplation, introspection and coffee, I came to a conclusion that now seems so obvious that I can’t believe I missed it.  People believe that estate planning is a concern for only the wealthy, because only the wealthy have estates.  Well that’s just plain silly.  An “estate plan” is nothing more than another term for “stuff plan.”  So, if we all started to call it stuff planning we’d all know it was for all of us!  We all have stuff, some good stuff and some bad stuff.  My stuff is important to me because it’s mine.  Your stuff might be better than mine because I don’t have it, but that’s a whole other posting.

In short, estate/stuff planning is simply a set of instructions that you are writing regarding your stuff and what you want to do with your stuff.  Normally, you want your stuff going to your family, sometimes friends and sometimes charities.  But, don’t you want to be the one that decides what happens to your stuff?  That’s an estate plan – your plan for what happens to your stuff.

Now there are a number of requirements that must be met in order to have a valid estate plan.  Your estate plan has to be written down, you must sign it and people have to see you sign it.  That’s the simple part.  Now the plans get more complex depending on how much stuff you have, how long you want to control your stuff (even after you’re gone) and where you want your stuff to go in the end.  Case in point, I love my son, but I think he should wait a few years before he gets my car – or at least until he can walk and is out of diapers.  So in the mean time, I’d need someone to look after my stuff for my son.  See how it gets a bit more complicated.

In order to make your estate plan, you’ll need to put down your wishes into a document called a will or a trust.  To make sure it actually does what you want, you’ll need to have an experienced attorney write up your plan.

Here’s something fun.  The first question you ask the lawyer who’s about to write your will or trust should be “How much of your practice is estate planning?”  If they tell you anything less than 100%, turn around and walk out of their office.  Lots of attorneys claim that they can take care of your estate plan, but if it’s my stuff, I want the guy who works on taking care of stuff all the time.

Finally, if you don’t come up with a plan regarding your stuff, don’t worry.  There’s a plan out there for all your stuff.  It’s the government’s plan and they hope you like it.  Then again, it doesn’t matter if you like it.  This plan will happen if you don’t make one of your own.  The problem with the government’s plan is that someone might be left out of the plan that you would have made and that person now misses out on getting some of your stuff.  Here are some examples:

Example 1: If more than one of your relatives want the same part of your stuff, that can get messy and expensive…and a lot of your stuff will be used to pay the courts and attorneys to sort it all out.  (Fun for the lawyer, but that’s about it).

Example 2: If you’re not married and you want your significant other to get some of your stuff when you die, you’d better get your plan in place, or it just won’t happen.  Under some states’ plans, your stuff will go to your blood relatives.  Period.

Example 3: If you’re married and you’ve got kids, don’t be too sure that your spouse is going to get all your stuff.  Your kids will probably get their share of your assets, which means your spouse may not get enough of your stuff to live on.

In short, if you have stuff and it matters to you, be responsible enough to decide what you want to do with your stuff.

One last thought: if your stuff includes kids, you’ve really got to have a plan in place.  If you don’t do you really think that the government is going to make the same decisions regarding your kids you would have if you were still making the decisions?

When you start a new job, you sign a lot of forms.  Tax forms, health care forms and retirement beneficiary designation forms.  Your first few days on the job you take the forms and read them, think about them, sign them and turn them back in to your boss or human resources department.  After that you probably never think about them again.  Big mistake.

One of the most poignant examples of this mistake comes out in a New York Post story back in 2001.  The story “Pension Pickle!” tells a twisted tail of Anne Friedman’s nearly million-dollar pension.  Anne was a lifelong New York City school system employee.  In 1974, Anne named her mother, uncle and sister on her beneficiary form with the Teachers’ Retirement System.  A year later, Ann met and married Bruce Friedman to whom she was happily married for the next two decades.

During her entire marriage, Anne never updated her beneficiary designation.  So after her death, Anne’s sister was the sole surviving beneficiary of Anne’s retirement plan and only her sister had the right to receive Anne’s pension money.  Anne’s sister exercised her right, took nearly a million dollars of Ann’s pension and left Bruce with nothing.  Bruce sued, lost, appealed and lost.

The moral of this tale, don’t be like Anne.  Always update your retirement plan beneficiary designation form, especially after a life-changing event, such as marriage, divorce or the birth of a child.  If you don’t you may end up leaving your loved ones with a broken heart and nothing else.

Unfortunately, not updating your beneficiary designation forms isn’t the only mistake that people make.  Many people assume that if they have a Will, the Will takes care of all the details.  Sorry, it just doesn’t work this way.  Beneficiary designations always trump what’s in a Will.  Even if Anne’s Will stated that all of her pension money is to go to Bruce, Anne’s sister would still end up with the money.  Sorry Bruce.

Alternatively, if you fail to name a beneficiary for an IRA, you are robbing your heirs (excluding your spouse) the right to maintain the same tax advantages that you derived from having the IRA in the first place.  That’s a tax bill that I’d just as soon have my heirs avoid for as long as possible.  For that matter, you’re also going to want to name multiple primary and secondary beneficiaries.  Again, if you don’t pick them yourself, the court will and you won’t have any control over how much goes to who or when it gets to them.

In the end, we all have to come to terms with the reality that each and everyone of us started our estate plans on the very first day of our very first jobs.  We may not think of them as estate plans because the words Will and Trust are nowhere to be seen, but these plans are deciding what happens to our stuff after were gone.  Wouldn’t you call that estate planning?  Just like a formal estate plan put in place by a qualified attorney, these plans need to be looked at and updated over and over.  Remember that estate planning is a lifetime process for the benefit of you during your lifetime and your heirs after you’re gone.

Pay attention to what you’re signing.

Estate planning is not just about reducing taxes.  Estate Planning is also about making sure your assets are distributed as you want both during your lifetime and after you’re gone. The fact is that when most people think about their assets they include not only the obvious tangible wealth they have accumulated (house, cars, bank accounts, stock, retirement accounts, etc.), but also their intangible wealth (their hopes, dreams and personal values), which they want to pass on to the next generation.  In order to ensure these goals are met you need to consider a number of questions.

It would be nice to start with the first questions in everyone’s mind – “Who should inherit my assets and how much should they get?”  But, before you can even think about that issue, you need to consider your marital status and where you live.  Here in California we are a community property state.  Regarding your material assets the term community property means that everything you or your spouse earn during your marriage is shared between the two of you 50/50.  For example you earn $100,000 a year and purchase a $500,000 house.  (Granted, I know that these numbers are impossible in California because you could never buy a house for $500,000 even with the decline in real estate prices.)  Your spouse is entitled not only to half the money you have earned, but also half the value of the house.  Regardless of whether or not your spouse has ever earned a penny during your marriage.

Most people think community property applies only to divorces.  Not true, we also have to look at it in regard to estate planning.  What can you give away with your estate plan?  Simple answer: only half of the community property.  Also, should you die without a will your surviving spouse is not only entitled to half of the community property, but also one third of your separate property, e.g., property you had before you got married or which you received by gift or bequest.  Even with a will or living trust, if you provide less for your spouse than state law deems appropriate, the law will allow the survivor to elect to receive the greater amount.

Once you’ve settled on a method of distribution for your spouse you should then ask yourself a few more questions.

Do you want your children/beneficiaries to share equally in your estate?

Do you wish to include grandchildren or others as beneficiaries?

Would you like to leave any assets to charity?

Do you have a method for passing on your intangible wealth?  Here at Chhokar Law Group, P.C. we offer “Priceless Conversations” which allow you to pass on your values, hopes and dreams to your family and friends.  You can learn more about our methods of passing on your intangible wealth at www.yourtotalestateplan.com.

Which assets should the beneficiaries in the questions above inherit?

You may also want to consider special questions when transferring certain types of assets. For example: If you own a business, should the business pass only to your children who are active in the business?  Should you compensate the other children not involved in the business with assets of equal value?  How do we solve this problem?

If you own rental property, should all beneficiaries inherit?  If so, should they all inherit in equal shares?  How should they inherit the rental property, as joint tenants or tenants in common?  Do they all have the ability to manage the property?

How much do the particular financial needs of each beneficiary play a part in what they inherit?

When and how should they inherit the assets?  In determining the answer as to how your beneficiaries should inherit your assets, at a minimum you should focus on the following factors: (1) The potential age and maturity of the beneficiaries; (2) The financial needs of you and your spouse during your lifetimes; and (3) The tax implications at every level considering Income Tax, Gift Tax, Estate Tax and Generation Skipping Tax.

Outright bequests offer simplicity, flexibility and potentially some tax advantages, but you have no control over what the recipient does with the assets once they are transferred. Trusts are advantageous when the beneficiaries are young or immature, when your estate is large, and especially for tax planning reasons. Also, trusts can provide for professional asset management capabilities an individual beneficiary may lack while allowing for the trust maker to set up his or her own terms for how and when the beneficiaries are to receive inheritances.

Trusts can even keep all of your assets held in trust private and away from the court system and potential predators; unlike a will which requires you to go through the public process of probate in which fees and court costs can be as high 5% of the total value of your estate.

In the end remember that one of the simplest and best ways to define probate is as follows.  “Probate” is the filing of a lawsuit, against yourself, with your own money, in order to notify your creditors of their potential claims against you.

Let’s just avoid all of these issues and use a properly drafted and maintained trust designed for you and only you!

People often tell me that they don’t need a Will or Trust because they own all of their property in joint tenancy.  This idea seems to have gained a foothold in recent years, so much so that joint tenancy is sometimes referred to as the “Poor Man’s Will.”  Unfortunately, holding property in joint tenancy at the expense of not having an Estate Plan can wind up being an extremely expensive proposition (monetarily and otherwise).

Admittedly, holding property in joint tenancy (or tenancy by the entirety) with your husband or wife is an effective substitute for a Will at the death of the first spouse to die.   At that point, probate is avoided, and all jointly owned property automatically becomes the sole property of the surviving spouse.

The problem arises when the surviving spouse dies — at this spouse’s death, his or her property (if still owned in his or her own name) will become subject to probate. Furthermore, if the surviving spouse died without a Will (i.e. intestate), then all of this property will be distributed according to California law rather than according to the surviving spouse’s wishes.  For example: you may be estranged from your son because of his alcohol or drug problem, but if he is your only heir under California law at the time of your death if you die intestate, he’ll receive your entire probate estate.  No protections for your estate or for your son.

Probate and intestacy can be avoided if the surviving spouse does some estate planning after the death of the first spouse to die, but we simply cannot assume that this will happen.  Sometimes spouses die simultaneously, or soon after each after, and there’s simply no time to do estate planning.  Sometimes the surviving spouse becomes disabled, and doesn’t have the capacity to execute estate-planning documents.  Or sometimes the surviving spouse just doesn’t know enough about financial matters to think about seeing an estate-planning attorney.

Even bigger problems can arise if the surviving spouse places property in joint tenancy with one of his or her children.  Besides having potentially negative gift tax ramifications, making your child a co-owner of a bank account or home can greatly increase family strife.  In many cases, the surviving spouse does not realize the nature of the property interest that he or she has given the child.  What if the child empties out the joint bank account, or refuses to consent to the sale of the jointly owned home?  To the surprise of many people, both of these actions would be entirely within the child/joint tenant’s rights.  In addition, placing property in joint tenancy with a child can cause problems even after the surviving spouse’s death.  At that point, the surviving spouse’s other children may attempt to argue that the joint tenancy was established only for convenience (instead of for gift purposes), or that the child improperly influenced the surviving spouse’s decision to name the child as a joint tenant.

In the end, all of these issues can be avoided by simply talking to a professional estate planning attorney.

Most estate planning attorneys tell you a lot about what they’ve done professionally, who’s money they’ve saved, what schools they’ve gone to and that’s about it.  Next, they jump into what you should do with your money and family (usually in that order).  In my opinion, that doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy.  If I’m letting someone into the deepest recesses of my life and telling them the whole truth, well I want to know a bit more about them too.  So here we have it.  Keep reading and eventually I’ll tell you everything about me!

When I started Chhokar Law Group, P.C. I decided that I was going to have a different type of law firm.  Why?  Because I can … I’m in charge.  That means that if we fail or succeed, I’m taking the blame and in turn the credit.  It’s simultaneously, terrifying, frustrating, enlightening and invigorating.  A lot of people have asked me how I could even think about starting my own shop in this “recession.”  Well the answer is really simple … I love coming to work everyday.   I wonder how many of those people asking me the question can say the same thing.  I love what I do, I’m passionate about how I do it and I adore the people I work with every single day.  It may be scary and hard but it’s also oh so much fun.

So my promise to you here and now is that my firm is not your average law firm and nor will it ever be!