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Attorneys are doing to give you a lot of different answers to your questions, leaving you more confused than when you went into the office. The reason being is they each have different areas of law, or specialties. Check out some of the most common tools and how to use one tool to get three very important things done.

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. ...

Years ago I remember reading about a “Marshmallow Experiment,” where Stanford researcher Walter Mischel gave a group of three to five year-olds a choice: Eat one marshmallow now, or wait fifteen minutes and get two marshmallows. The experiment was intended to measure children’s ability to delay gratification.

Mischel found that only 30 percent of the children were able to wait fifteen minutes; most of the children gobbled down the marshmallow before the time was up. As I read this I remember ...

With all the news about the debt ceiling and the stock market in crisis, it is natural to wonder just how safe is the money we hold in bank accounts.  This question may be particularly important to for trustees and beneficiaries of Trust accounts.

Most of us know that after the Great Depression, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) was formed.  It is an independent agency of the United States government that protects bank deposits against the loss if an FDIC-insured ...

I have tried really hard to stay out of the political battles, but I need to weigh in on this one.  The trillion dollar tax increase President Obama wants, on top of the half trillion tax increase imposed in the health care bill will sink our economy.  The following graph shows the top tax rates in the US since the income tax was implemented in 1913.

The tax started ...

Question:  Can multiple items be placed into one trust or should a Trust be created for each item?

Answer:  You can create multiple trusts.  However, usually one trust holds all of a person’s or couple’s items.  The trust owns all of your assets (those that require a signature to dispose of), so that the items won’t have to be probated upon your death.

The trust should “own” your bank accounts, safe deposit box, brokerage accounts, and all of your real estate.  Your ...