Newlywed? Consider These Estate Planning Tips

Marriage marks a huge milestone, and it involves countless adjustments in many areas of your life. One area that newlyweds often overlook is estate planning. When you're embarking on a new phase in your life, the last thing you want to think about is what would happen if one of you passed away or became disabled. However, laying the right groundwork now can help you ensure your family is taken care of in the future. Here are a few tips:

• If you don't have Wills, now is the time for each of you to put one in place. This allows you to provide for each other in the way that you think is best, instead of subjecting your estate to the rules imposed by state law. • Take a look at the property each of you owns. It's important for you to know exactly what you own, and how your property is titled. For example, property that is co-owned as Joint Tenants With Right of Survivorship is not affected by your Will because it is not subject to probate. Instead, when one owner passes away, the property automatically passes to the surviving owner. • Review your beneficiary designations. You'll want to double-check your retirement accounts, life insurance policies and other assets for which you've designated a beneficiary. Is the current beneficiary still the person you want the asset to go to? If not, now is the time to make a change. Assets for whom you've designated a beneficiary are not subject to probate, so your Will does not control who receives them. • If you don't have an incapacity plan, you'll want to put one in place. Your incapacity plan is a group of documents that control who will make medical and financial decisions on your behalf in the event that you're ill or severely injured and can't take care of yourself. Without it, your spouse may need to go to court in order to get the right to take care of you and your finances in the event that you become incapacitated.

Your estate planning attorney can help you review your assets, make an assessment of your planning goals and needs, and put together a plan that's tailored to you and your spouse.

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What Are Estate Taxes and Will They Apply to My Last Will and Testament?

Estate taxes are one of the most hotly debated tax law subjects today. Essentially what happens is that when you pass on your estate will go to your beneficiaries and heirs subject to your Last Will and Testament. However, your beneficiaries and heirs will have to pay tax on the portion of the estate that they receive. This is a tax that occurs not only at the federal level but also at the state level as well. One of the instances where the tax will actually not apply is when your entire estate goes straight to your spouse without going to anyone else. This is specifically an exception that is implanted into the tax law in order to have the surviving spouse not subject to tax. In 2010, the tax was actually completely repealed but it is to come back in 2011 as such the estates will again be subject to this tax.

Thus, on a general level the estate will be subject to estate taxes unless the entire estate goes to the surviving spouse. One of the ways that you can actually reduce the amount of estate taxes that you pay is to have an attorney prepare your Last Will and Testament. What they can do is actually utilize the latest in tax law provisions in order to increase your tax savings. One of the techniques that they can actually use is a disclaimer trust which in essence works like this. This trust created by an attorney works in the way that certain portion of the estate is actually disclaimed by the surviving spouse and it goes into the trust. In turn the trust will at a later time go to the surviving spouse's heirs and as such they can take advantage of the exclusions from taxes.

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