Estate Tax Planning
The attorneys at the Law Offices of David Lee Rice, A Professional Law Corporation provide comprehensive, tax-sensitive estate planning designed to meet the goals and objectives of our clients.
Estate Planning
Our areas of representation include:
- Wills: We prepare simple wills for clients, as well as pour-over wills, which are wills which are designed to accompany a revocable living trust. For clients with minor children, we also prepare wills with guardianship provisions.
- Revocable Living Trusts: We prepare revocable living trusts and offer assistance in properly funding the trust with our client's assets, ensuring that our client's assets avoid probate administration.
- Durable Financial Powers of Attorney: We prepare durable financial powers of attorney, which allow our client to specify who will make financial decisions on their behalf in the event they become incapacitated.
- Advance Health Care Directives: We prepare advance health care directives to allow our clients to designate a health care agent to make medical decisions on their behalf, to specify the types of medical treatment they wish to receive or reject, and to make important end-of-life decisions such as preferences regarding life support, anatomical gifts, and disposition of remains.
Advanced Estate Planning
Our attorneys formulate tax saving strategies for higher net-worth clients, including advanced estate planning techniques such as the following:
- Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
- Grantor Retained Income Trusts
- Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts
- Family Limited Partnerships
- Family Limited Liability Companies
Retirement Benefit Planning
A frequently overlooked aspect of estate planning involves retirement benefit planning. Retirement benefit accounts are controlled by the beneficiary designations on the account, not by the will or trust of the account owner. It is important to carefully coordinate the beneficiary designation with the client's estate plan to ensure that the client's objectives are properly met, and to qualify the account for long-term income tax deferral using the "stretch-out" or life expectancy of the beneficiary payout method.
Estate Tax Planning
Pursuant to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the estate tax will be completely repealed in the year 2010. All estates of any size in the year 2010 are exempt from federal estate tax. However, on January 1, 2011, unless Congress acts to make the repeal of the estate tax permanent, the amount of the estate tax exemption (the amount an individual may have in their estate before being subject to estate tax) will drop to $1 million, the same amount of exemption available in 2002, and the top estate tax rate will be 55%, the same top estate tax rate applicable in 2001.
Given the uncertainty in the current state of estate taxes, it is important to seek legal counsel with a wealth of experience in estate planning for high net-worth individuals and with the requisite taxation background to understand the estate, gift, income and generation-skipping transfer tax implications of various estate planning techniques. Firm principal David Lee Rice is a California State Bar Certified Specialist in Taxation law, Chair of the State Bar Income Tax Committee, and Chair of the Tax Procedure and Litigation Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Contact the Law Offices of David Lee Rice, APLC for exceptional legal representation in the areas of estate planning and estate taxation.
