Author Archive

Protecting Assets-Don t Wait

Protecting assets-Don t wait to get it done. Lessons on protecting assets can come in the most unexpected ways. I spent Saturday on the beach in Sarasota with my wife and a couple of friends. The water was sparkling blue and we decided to sit on that gorgeous white sand for awhile enjoy the scenery and just talk.

As we sat there, suddenly I heard ...

Hatfield-McCoy Feud In Your Family

The Hatfield-McCoy feud  history miniseries brings to my mind the troubles that families get into when parents neglect their estate planning. Families are at their weakest at the death of a loved one. In this compromised state, it is easy for feelings to be hurt and lasting family battles ensue. Estate planning is one of the best ways to prevent a future family ...

By Kristy Phillips

Tax Audit

A Tax audit comes with taxes. April 15 is here and as you file your taxes, you may be thinking about tax audit defense. If you haven’t, you should be. I was shocked to read in Bloomberg that Uncle Sam is auditing more Americans than ever before. In the year 2000, 1 in every 203 Americans were audited. By ...

By Kristy Phillips

It looks like Carnival, the cruise line will take a $90 million hit. Their cruise ship, the Costa Concordia capsized off the west coast of Grosseto, Italy on Friday January 13. This unlucky event not only stranded almost 4,200 people; more than a dozen lost their lives. NBC News reported that Captain Francesco Schettino steered the ship too close to shore thereby hitting some rocks. As the massive ship lay on its side rescuers are trying to find ...

Estate planning must involve every aspect of your estate.  As a result, I recommend that you prepare your obituary in advance.  It will make things easier on your family later.  As you prepare the obituary, keep in mind identity thieves.   Identity thieves regularly scan the obituaries. They note all the personal information and use it to their advantage.

Some thieves will use the deceased information to get duplicate driver’s licenses and birth certificates.  They take these documents and use them to ...

Too Bad Liliane Bettencourt didn’t have one of these!

You may have read that

Mrs Bettencourt’s lawyer plans to appeal the decision, but for now Liliane Bettencourt wealth and property is being controlled by her daughter Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers.

Mrs. Bettencourt and her daughter have been involved in a very public feud over the fate of the L’Oreal fortune, France’s third-largest estate, for many years with her daughter arguing that her mother ...

An LLC tax election is how you tell the IRS how your LLC will be taxed.  The federal government does not recognize an LLC as a classification for federal tax purposes, so you have to make an election on how your LLC will be taxed, i.e.  a sole proprietorship, a partnership an S corporation etc.  The LLC election is made by filing Form 8832.  Your election is entered on line 8.  If the LLC does not enter a date, the ...

Roth IRAs are a big deal. HUGE deal in fact. They’re worth standing on your head for. The government has made it easier to convert to a Roth IRA now, so what are you waiting for?

Lee goes over how to stretch your IRA, making it last much longer than your lifetime, passing on your wealth to your kids. This is a huge deal, being able to grow in a tax free environment. It’s a protected environment, meaning they can’t loose it in a lawsuit or a bankruptcy. Big deal? You can bet on it!

When there was a death in the family, I used to tell my estate planning clients not to worry.  I told them to take the time they needed to mourn.   I could do this because an estate planning trust bought them additional time.  Unfortunately, now a death is nothing but an opportunity for identity thieves.

Identity thieves take a deceased’s information and use it for fraudulent transactions before anyone notices.  This leaves a mess for the unsuspecting family to clean up. ...