It’s important to plan for the future, especially when it comes to your legacy. That conversation can be a delicate one, but nevertheless, it’s important. When you think about your final wishes and making sure they are followed, you may also be thinking of your family, friends, and loved ones, and how you want to provide for them, even in a future you can’t be part of. Having the right estate plan in place can help you do this. According to CNBC, 67% of Americans do not have an estate plan explaining they just “…haven’t gotten around to it.” In that same survey, 12% of respondents said they do not know how to get a will. A 2019 Brookdale Senior Living poll, a company that operates retirement homes across the country, showed that 40% of Americans don’t know what’s in their parents’ wills and 30% don’t know if their parents even have a will. Boston College reported that “...roughly $59 trillion will be transferred from approximately 94 million estates in America between 2007 and 2061.” Of that 59 trillion, they report that “... beneficiaries will receive $36 trillion between 2007 and 2061, and $5.6 trillion will go to federal estate taxes.” This is where we can help. At Lineweaver Financial Group and Lineweaver Wealth Advisors, we offer two different paths with a range of options to meet every need. First, we work closely aside many elder law and estate planning attorneys who can work
At the Lineweaver Companies, we believe a team approach to coordinating all your financial, legal, tax, and insurance needs helps save you time, money and worry. For example, we had clients who were both close to retirement, and unfortunately the husband had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The first thing we did was to work with them to make sure his pension was triggered in such a way that the wife could receive a greater lifetime benefit - almost a million more dollars than she would have otherwise received. At the same time, in this sort of situation, you have to consider powers of attorney – and other basic estate planning documents that everyone should have, like wills, and even if trusts make sense for your particular situation. There were also huge student loan balances of more than $120,000. But, because they kept the loans entirely in the father’s name, when he passed, the debt was forgiven. But what many people don’t know is that the forgiveness of debt – in this case student loan debt - is considered income by the IRS – and therefore taxable. As you can imagine, in this case it was significant: an additional $40,000. However, we were able to work with the family and the IRS to get the entire amount forgiven as well – so they ended up having the debt and the tax bill forgiven. Given the pension payouts and their savings, they had significant assets that needed to be managed eff