Beneficiary Designations

April 9, 2009

Beneficiary designation is critical to your estate plan especially when naming who gets the proceeds of your life insurance proceeds and your retirement plans. These funds are transferred directly to the people you name without going through probate. A spouse has the option of rolling over retirement monies into his or her IRA. Required distributions [...]

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Converting to a Roth IRA

March 12, 2009

In 2010 the income limitation for converting traditional IRA to a Roth IRA will be eliminated. Furthermore, one half of the conversion income can be reported in 2011 and the final one half of conversion income can be reported in 2012. Whether paying the tax for future tax free withdrawals depends on many factors, but [...]

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Charities

March 10, 2009

I am spending this week transporting the homeless in my community. This year we see an increased number of able bodied people left homeless because their jobs have been eliminated. I urge that everyone writing a will or revocable living trust consider a gift to a charity that helps those who have fallen on hard [...]

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By-Pass Trust

March 4, 2009

Many of you have seen your estate values cut in half or more while the Federal Estate tax minimum has gone from $2 million to $3.5 million. The feeling is that you do not need to do any estate planning. The problem is that you do not know what the law will be at the [...]

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