Page 22 - BusinessWest 2023 Senior Planning Guide

Estate
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tax rate is 40%.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law in
December 2017, doubled the gift- and estate-tax basic exclusion amount and the GST tax exemption to $11,180,000 in 2018. After 2025, they are scheduled to revert to their pre-2018 levels and cut by about one-half.
Whether your estate will be subject to state death taxes depends on the size of your estate and the tax laws in effect in the state in which you are domiciled.
Elderly or Ill
If you’re elderly or ill, you’ll want to write a will or update your existing one, consider a revocable living
Medicare
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How Do I Learn More?
Health New England’s Medicare Advantage plans are a popular option for people aged 65 and older who are looking to tailor their healthcare coverage to their personal needs. As part of Baystate
Health, Health New England has many high-quality providers in our network across Western Mass., and we have plans that cover you anywhere you travel in the U.S.
Will
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alternate agents to serve in this capacity.
• You can also prepare a memorandum that
will list various personal property items. Your personal representative will follow this list as a guideline. A memorandum can be completed by you individually, but you need to keep it with your will so the personal representative has access to it. This memorandum is a great mechanism to distribute
Property
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themselves, but at least some of the beneficiaries will receive some of the items they want.
If this does not work, it may be necessary to gather the lists of the desired items by the family and engage the services of a mediator to attempt
to resolve the differences. The problem then becomes whether the items are more valuable in terms of material value or sentimental value. If
the sentimental value isn’t as great as the material value, then a client might decide to choose a larger, more valuable item and hope to trade it later for the more sentimental item.
If the resolution is not able to be made voluntarily, then an inventory of all items will have to be filed with the court, and perhaps an appraiser or two will have to be hired by the estate to value all the items. Some items without much value may be included in a ‘lot,’ which will be valued as a commingling of these items and valued as such.
Once these are all valued and listed on the inventory, one party might have to petition
trust, and make sure you have a durable power of attorney and a healthcare directive. Talk with your family about your wishes, and make sure they have copies of your important papers or know where to locate them.
Help with Estate Planning
Looking for guidance for getting started with estate planning, or maybe you just need a second opinion? The CFS fnancial advisors at UMassFive Federal Credit Union are well-versed in this type of planning and can work in conjunction with your estate-planning attorney. Visit investments@ umassfive.coop for more information.
Non-deposit investment products and services are
To learn more about choosing the right Medicare or Medicare Advantage plan, you can attend Health New England’s live information sessions, which you can find and register for at healthnewengland.org/ medicare/sessions.
For more information about Health New England, visit healthnewengland.org/medicare or call (877) 443-3314 (TTY: 711). SHINE, Massachusetts’ free Medicare advice service, is available online at mass.
personal items as well as sentimental items to beneficiaries of your choice — and if you change your mind, you can write a new memorandum.
This list is meant to be a starting point, and everyone’s situation is different. The most important step is to prepare a will; otherwise, the Commonwealth will dictate who will receive your assets at your death. BW
the probate court to determine the proposed distribution of these items, which is unfortunate, as they will be utilizing valuable court time merely to divide the tangible items. The court has the discretion to appoint a master, who will be an experienced lawyer, to hold the hearing at the expense of the estate, and then each party will also be paying their own lawyer to argue over who will receive what items.
In many cases, when this matter is over and resolved, none of the parties are pleased with the result, which means it was probably a fair and equitable decision.
Very often, clients are convinced that the children will have no problem distributing the assets and dividing the items; the client will merely state that nobody will want anything, as they have their own items. This is not always the situation; when a person passes away, not only do the children have
a say in what will be distributed, but their spouses may wish to intervene and strongly suggest what
offered through CUSO Financial Services, LP (CFS), a registered broker-dealer (member FINRA/SIPC) and SEC registered investment advisor. Products offered through CFS are not NCUA/NCUSIF or otherwise federally insured, are not guarantees or obligations of the credit union, and may involve investment risk, including possible loss of principal. Investment representatives are registered through CFS. UMassFive has contracted with CFS to make non- deposit investment products and services available to credit-union members. CFS does not provide tax or legal advice. For such guidance, consult your tax or legal professional. BW
gov/health-insurance-counseling or by calling (800) 243-4636. For more information about Medicare, visit medicare.gov. BW
Sarah Fernandes is the Medicare sales manager at Health New England and been with Health New England for more than 23 years. She and her team educate Medicare beneficiaries in Western Mass. on their Medicare options.
Mary Paier Powers is a partner at Powers Law Group in Springfield and West Springfield, where her practices focus primarily on estate settlement, estate planning, and elder law.
their spouse should take. It is usually helpful to keep these in-laws (often called out-laws) out of the decision-making process, as this only causes more people to be involved and greater dissent between the parties.
When completing your own estate plan, consider the potential use of the memorandum with specific detail for the items you wish to distributed. Be careful in considering and discussing these issues with the children since, if you ask them all what they want and they all state that they want the same items, you will then be faced with the decision of having to tell some of them they will not be getting certain items. This can easily cause conflict, and family dinners and holiday occasions may prove to be less than pleasant. BW
Hyman G. Darling is a shareholder and the head of the probate/estates team at Bacon Wilson; (413) 781-0560; [email protected]
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