John J. Long, Jr., JD – Partner
Please join us in celebrating and congratulating John on his new role as Partner at Stewart Law, P.A.
Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)
When you give assets to someone during your lifetime or through your estate, the gifts are subject to gift and estate taxes. Fortunately, current laws provide for a large gift and estate tax exemption—an amount you can give before you face any tax liability.
Is It Time To Plan A Family Meeting?
With the current pandemic, election year, and unsettled economy, now is the best time to consider scheduling an annual family meeting.
Tips About Gifting
Lifetime gifting, to children or others, has been a popular technique to reduce estate taxes for a long time. Currently, with estate tax exemption amounts exceeding $11 Million per person, most people do not have an urgent tax savings motivation for making gifts. However, this doesn’t mean that sticking to a gifting program is without value. The ultimate measure is at death and, at that time, your property is likely to be worth more than it is today and it’s entirely possible that the amount exempted from taxes will be less. Aside from tax savings, our clients see at least 2 […]
A Prediction about Estate Planning in the Near Term
As trusted advisors, we see it as our job to alert you to strategies that can help build and protect your family’s wealth and the lifestyle it supports. From a macro perspective, we see an estate tax that takes essentially no wealth from the vast majority of families, historically high federal deficits, and a real possibility for an administration change that would take us in the direction of more assets being lost to estate and gift taxes. An important and impactful estate tax minimization strategy has always been to use your exemption sooner rather than later. Even if the exemption amount stays […]
How To Protect Your Assets From Creditors
Protecting your assets from creditors (“asset protection”) is a topic you don’t think much about until a triggering event, and then it can jump to the top of your priorities. The triggering event may be an accident with personal injuries on your property, a contract commitment turning bad, or involvement in a financial project where substantial resources are lost. Asset protection planning can take many forms, including changing asset titles or setting up structures, such as LLCs or Trusts, to own assets. With respect to Trusts, in the past these have probably gotten more press than their actual usage would […]