Estate planning is the best way to build, protect, and preserve your legacy. By utilizing Wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, you can craft a plan tailored to your unique needs. At the Las Vegas Law Firm of Jeffrey Burr, we've been assisting individuals and families throughout the community for over 40 years, offering customized solutions to protect your family and assets.
Crafting Your Legacy with Precision
Crafting the perfect estate plan is more than just a legal process – it's a reflection of your life's work and your hopes for the future. Our dedicated team understands the importance of this journey. With our decades of experience and legal expertise, we're here to guide you through every step of the process, ensuring your legacy is preserved according to your wishes.
Guidance for Optimal Tax Efficiency
At the Law Firm of Jeffrey Burr, we recognize that minimizing tax consequences is a critical element of any comprehensive estate plan. That's why our estate planning attorneys are either CPAs or hold advanced degrees in taxation and are dedicated to ensuring your plan addresses tax concerns most efficiently and effectively possible. Whether it's structuring trusts or implementing strategic tax-saving measures, we work to protect your assets and maximize your benefits.
Your Trusted Partner in Estate Planning Excellence
We understand that estate planning can feel overwhelming, but you don't have to navigate it alone. Our team is here to provide the guidance and support you need to make informed decisions about your future. From creating Wills and trusts to advanced estate planning, we're committed to helping you build a secure legacy that withstands the test of time.
Don't overlook the hidden tax deductions within your estate plan. Schedule a consultation with us today and let's embark on a journey to maximize your legacy for generations to come.
"There is an important lesson I have learned during my over 40 years as an estate planner.
That lesson is that estate planning is not an event, it is a process."
So many practitioners focus on the creation of the documents necessary to create a plan. However, they fail to understand that an estate plan is fluid and necessarily needs updating over time. In addition, often not enough attention is paid to all of the ancillary work that is necessary to carry out a proper estate plan such as titling of assets, keeping separate property separate, designing a plan that provides asset protection, keeping current on tax laws that may affect the plan as well as choosing the right individuals or trust company as Trustee.
As you are aware, at Jeffrey Burr, we pay close attention to all of the tasks and laws that cause an estate plan to be effective and relevant for our clients and their families. If you are reading this, you are already aware that we send out semiannual newsletters to keep you informed of important estate planning issues such as law or tax changes, and to give you ideas to strengthen and enhance your plan. We also send out communications as necessary to inform you of urgent pending law changes and resultant planning opportunities.
Part of the process of estate planning is also to assist you in funding your trust and the other entities that are created. We take great care in assisting you with the proper titling of your assets to avoid problems in the future.
During the interview process, we make every effort to ascertain if our clients have separate property as well as community property. Special planning is often necessary when this is the case. In Nevada, any gifts or inheritances you leave to your loved ones become the sole and separate property of that loved one, unless he or she commingles it with a spouse. Care should be taken to ensure that what you leave to your heirs is left in a manner that facilitates that property remaining their separate property. Likewise, your trust can be designed to shield the assets you leave to your loved ones from their spouses in the event of divorce and creditors. In addition, many of our clients have blended families which usually calls for specialized planning.
As part of the estate planning process, we make every effort to help you choose what type of trust fits your needs the most. For example, if you are involved in a high-risk profession or have significant assets, you may choose to create an asset protection trust in addition to your revocable living trust.
Lastly, unfortunately, we all eventually pass on. At Jeffrey Burr, we have an excellent Trust Administration department to help your successor trustees and heirs navigate their way through the administration of your estate and ensure your heirs are informed every step of the way.
Hopefully you agree with me that proper estate planning is a process and not an event. The attorneys, paralegals and staff at Jeffrey Burr are committed to helping you through this process in a competent and caring manner. We thank you for allowing us to be part of your estate planning process.
Choosing colors, cakes, decorations, and invitations can seem daunting, but once the big day is over, there are other important considerations. Whether or not it’s your first walk down the aisle, it’s important to nail down particular aspects of your estate planning during this pivotal time.
Estate planning isn’t just for those with more experience under their belt. Estate planning is for everyone—especially those who are married. This article is geared towards first-time marriages and will overview estate planning documents newlyweds should have. Creating an estate plan can be a bit costly up-front but will save time and money later. It’s beneficial to begin your life together on the right foot. Compared to planning a wedding, your estate planning is a piece of cake. As promised, here are 10 estate planning tips for newlyweds.
While the above tips for your newlywed estate planning may seem a little daunting, the process can be made quite simple with guidance from your estate planning, insurance, and investment professionals. Contact them shortly after you return from your honeymoon to begin this process.
At Jeffrey Burr, LTD., our focus is providing excellent estate planning and tax guidance. We provide services to local Nevadans, as well as U.S. and non-U.S. residents outside Nevada. We offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation for potential estate planning clients. Contact us today to set up a consultation with one of our experienced attorneys.
Our office recently sent a letter to our clients who could potentially be affected by proposed changes to Section 2704 of the Internal Revenue Code, which may eliminate valuation discounting for gift and estate tax purposes. It is not too late to schedule an appointment to discuss the implications on your estate plan if this new regulation is implemented.
As a brief background, the US Treasury has recently issued Proposed Regulations that could have a dramatic impact on your estate planning by eliminating valuation discounts. For wealthy people looking to minimize their future certain estate tax, this is critical.
If you are concerned about protecting a family business, family investment assets, or real estate from having to be sold in order to pay the federal estate tax at your death, then it is worth investigating this.
Act Now: Time is of the essence. Once the Proposed Regulations are effective, which could be as early as year-end, the ability to purposely structure discounts on assets of your estate might be substantially reduced or eliminated, thus curtailing your tax and asset protection planning flexibility. Properly planning with this technique takes time to structure the various steps of the transaction. It is important to start as soon as possible in order to complete the planning before the regulations are finalized.
Please call our office today at 702-433-4455 to schedule an appointment to review your estate plan.
Even if you are not a celebrity or self-made millionaire, failing to plan properly will leave a huge mess for your family.
Some ways to make sure that your family is not scrambling to find assets upon your passing or spending thousands of dollars in court and attorney fees to transfer those assets to your beneficiaries are:
1. Make sure you at least have a simple Will.
The Will tells a court who you would like your Executor to be, or person that you would like to manage and oversee the probate process. If you fail to nominate someone, the court will nominate someone for you. A Will also directs the court to distribute assets to your named beneficiaries in accordance with the terms you lay out. If you do not have a Will, the state substitutes its own estate plan for yours by distributing your assets according to the state’s intestacy statutes – which may inadvertently disinherit those who you actually wanted to leave your assets to.
2. Determine if a Living Trust is good for you.
Living Trusts enable you to bypass the court probate process entirely. They enable for a smooth transition of assets from you to your beneficiaries after you are gone. Another benefit of the Living Trust is that it can provide for means to take care of you if you are ever incapacitated.
3. Title your Assets Properly.
If you have a Living Trust, it is important to “fund” the Trust with your assets. This means that you must transfer title of bank accounts, investment accounts, real property and vehicles into the name of the Trust. Otherwise, your family will have to probate the assets left in your individual name. Life Insurance and Retirement Plans should have updated beneficiary designations, which can include your Trust.
4. Keep an Updated Asset Inventory.
One of the most difficult parts of distributing a person’s assets after they are gone is figuring out exactly what that person owned before they passed away. Keeping an updated asset inventory will enable your family to effectively take over without having to scramble to figure out if or where you held investment accounts, stock, real property, etc.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, investing in setting up an estate plan now with an experienced estate planning attorney will save your estate (and your family) money in the long run. So to prevent a mess for your family, even if you are not a celebrity or self-made millionaire, take the time now to meet with an estate planning attorney and determine the best estate plan for you.
Many clients feel that once their children or grandchildren reach a certain age, they will have obtained a financial maturity that will enable those beneficiaries to make good financial decisions and not spend their inheritance in one visit to a casino.
Thus, in many estate plans beneficiaries are entitled to receive their inheritance all at once when they reach a certain age, or to receive portions at certain ages. While a beneficiary at age 25 or 30 may very well be financially mature, there are dangers besides a beneficiary’s propensity to spend money to consider when crafting an estate plan.
When a beneficiary is entitled to an outright distribution, those assets may become subject to more than a beneficiary’s spending habits; a judgment creditor can seize an inheritance to satisfy a claim, a bankruptcy court can seize an inheritance to pay creditors and costs of the bankruptcy proceeding, a divorce court may award some or all of an inheritance to that beneficiary’s soon-to-be ex-spouse, or if the beneficiary fails to create his or her own estate plan and something happens to him or her, the inheritance may become subject to a probate. If a minor is the beneficiary of an outright distribution, they will receive a check when they are 18, with no limitations in place for how they can spend it.
To avoid those potential dangers, among others, you can direct through your estate plan documents that a beneficiary’s inheritance be held in trust for their benefit,with distributions to be made in the discretion of the trustee. By making distributionsto a beneficiary discretionary rather than mandatory, the inheritance is protectedbecause the money is not in the beneficiary’s pocket to spend or give away. Allowing the inheritance to stay in trust will also allow the assets to grow, enabling your beneficiary to receive more than what they were originallyentitled to over time.
At JEFFREY BURR, LTD. our attorneys have worked with many clients and their families to determine the best estate plan for the preservation of their legacies and protection of their beneficiaries. To discuss the best estate plan for your family, contact us today.
At the law offices of JEFFREY BURR, we help clients with their estate planning. But having the plan, a Will or Trust, is only part of the process. I found an interesting graphic on social media and I thought I would plagiarize the idea. The graphic discussed preparation of a “death dossier” – the files and documents that are helpful to gather in planning for your death. I thought of a few other names for this as listed in the title.
Here’s a summary of the documents or categories of documents that are helpful to gather and keep with or nearby your estate planning paperwork:
Taking care of these details can really help streamline the administration of your estate. Call us today at 702.433.4455.
Most people are aware that a good estate plan should contain provisions to distribute assets to loved ones while avoiding probate. Have you thought about what will happen to your pets? It is important to include provisions in your estate plan to address what will happen to your pets in the event of your death. This can include who will care for your pets if something happens to you and can also include financial distributions to care for your pets. Although you cannot directly leave money to your pet, you may leave money to their caretaker. Nevada law also specifically allows for pet trusts to be established. This type of planning can give you the peace of mind that your family, including your beloved pets, will be taken care of should something should happen to you.
If you are a pet owner, call one of our attorneys at 702-433-4455 to discuss how you can make sure your pets are included in your estate plan.
The question I am often asked is "do I really need a trust?" This is usually followed by a statement along the lines of "I have named beneficiaries to receive all of my accounts and the only other asset I own is my house." The short answer is: an estate of any size can benefit from a trust. Simply put, having a trust allows you to decide who will receive your assets, when they will receive your assets, and the manner in which your assets will be distributed to them.
Most people understand that a trust is preferable to a will in that a trust avoids probate. Of course, assets titled in joint tenancy and assets having a beneficiary designation will also avoid probate. Both of these techniques will result in a property automatically passing to the surviving beneficiary without probate. If, however, your joint tenant and/or designated beneficiary should predecease you, then any such property becomes subject to probate once again unless and until you take further action with respect to the ultimate disposition of the property.
A beneficiary, pay-on-death (POD) or transfer-on-death (TOD) designation will cause the timing of the distribution to occur upon an account owner’s death. Joint tenancy is also widely used as a tool to pass property upon a person’s death. The designation of joint tenancy, however, brings with it much more than simply being a gift upon death. Adding someone as a joint tenant to your property, gives that person present access to your property up to the whole thereof. For this reason, care should be taken in setting up joint tenancy unless you intend for your joint tenant to receive current rights in your property or you trust the person implicitly to carry out your wishes with respect to the disposition of such property both during your life and upon your death.
Assuming your joint tenant and/or named beneficiary survives you, the whole of the subject property will pass to such person upon your death. In other words, these probate avoidance techniques do not allow you to direct the timing or the manner of the distribution. For example, you cannot provide that the property be paid out to them over time or upon attaining certain ages, etc. In addition, should your joint tenant and/or designated beneficiary be a minor, he or she is unable to receive the property until someone takes steps to have a formal guardian of such minor appointed through the court.
If real property is indeed the only asset that is left for you to make provisions for upon your death, Nevada law allows for the execution and recordation of a deed upon death. While this may seem like a quick and easy solution to provide for the disposition of real property, it also carries with it certain drawbacks. The way the law is currently written, creditors reserve the right to assert claims against the property for 18 months following death. Consequently, a beneficiary of a deed upon death is realistically precluded from transferring or selling the property for a minimum of 18 months since title companies have been reluctant to insure title until after the creditor period has fully run.
While one or more probate avoidance techniques may be useful for certain assets in specific instances, there is simply no other estate planning technique that affords the same level of flexibility as a trust. A trust lets you determine the exact moment of when the desired gift will be made to the intended recipient. It allows you to give property outright or to maintain property in trust to be gifted out over time as you may direct. In the case where a beneficiary should predecease you, the trust can provide for any number of successive beneficiaries. It provides for orderly administration and distribution under the care of the person you appoint to act as your trustee. In short, a trust provides a canvas for you to design a plan to accomplish all of your estate planning objectives without the unintended consequences and/or pitfalls associated with other planning techniques. Thus, there is no real substitute for setting up a trust.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, blended families now outnumber traditional families. Blended families come in all shapes and sizes, where at least one spouse has at least one child from a prior marriage or relationship. Due to the variety of situations and dynamics of each unique blended family, a cookie-cutter estate plan will not suffice to accomplish each individual family’s goals. It is important to discuss your family situation with an estate planning professional who can personalize a plan for you and your family which will enable you to meet your family’s needs and address any concerns you may have. For blended families, below are several items to consider as you and your loved ones plan for the future and preserve your legacy.
Questions you may ask yourself when creating a new estate plan for your blended family may include:
In creating your new estate plan, it is important to evaluate your goals and priorities regarding how (and to whom) you want to distribute your assets after you are gone. An individual may leave their assets however and to whomever they please. In our experience, clients typically want to provide for their children and spouse. Providing for both in a blended family setting however can be complicated.
Our experience is that in many cases a surviving spouse of a blended family ends up re-designing or amending the estate plan for only his or her children’s benefit. The only way to get around that is to leave assets in trust.
In addition to deciding how and to whom you would like to gift your estate, it is necessary to decide who would be best to serve as your trustee, executor, agent, etc. If your children and spouse get along, nominating a child and the spouse to serve together in these capacities may be a good option. However, if you think tensions will arise, nominating an independent third party (an impartial corporation, professional, or non-family member friend), will eliminate any potential friction caused by naming one or the other member of your family as trustee, agent or executor.
For blended families it is essential to create a comprehensive and integrated estate plan where trusts, powers of attorney, last wills and testaments, life insurance beneficiary designations, and retirement plan beneficiary designations all align so that your wishes will be followed when you are gone.
We strongly suggest that you plan ahead in some fashion so that when these documents speak for you when you can no longer speak for yourself, your wishes are carried out and all of your loved ones are provided for in an orderly fashion. If you wish to discuss your priorities and goals in creating an estate plan for your family, please call us for a free 30 minute in office consultation.
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