At its core, estate planning is setting the terms upon which assets are transitioned from a person, often a parent, to another such as a child. Without proper estate planning creating trusts for children, a parent’s assets become available to the child immediately if at the parent’s death: (a) the parent was not married to [...]
Estate Planning Update July, 2022 1. 2022 Annual Gift Tax Exclusion: increased to $16,000 per donor, per donee. 2. 2022 Gift and Estate Tax Exemption: increased to $12,060,000 per donor through 2025, see #6. 3. Marital Deduction for Transfers to U.S. Spouse: remains unlimited. 4. 2022 Generation Skipping Tax Exclusion: increased to $12,060,000 per donor [...]
June marked the end of a four year complex trust administration odyssey. This administration could have been a television show, as it had every intrigue you can imagine - power struggles, illiquid assets, environmental claims, a defunct closely held business with unpaid claims, an injunction preventing the sale of real estate, property tax claims, third [...]
DeAngelis Legal documented the sale of goodwill of a Phoenix food distributer. In this friendly sale of the business, the buyer and seller had a long standing relationship. DeAngelis Legal prepared the purchase and sale agreement on behalf of the seller and the transaction closed with minimal changes from either party.
DeAngelis Legal prepared a comprehensive employment agreement with change in control provisions for this Scottsdale based business. For closely held companies, guaranteeing compensation upon a change in control or sale of the business is better than giving key employees equity in the entity. The benefits of this structure are (a) the employee does not have [...]
DeAngelis Legal advised long time Scottsdale clients on appropriate IRA beneficiary designations. After the 2017 Tax Act, non-spouse beneficiaries can no longer take distributions over their lifetime and in most cases must take all distributions within 10 years of the account owner’s death. This makes planning for large retirement accounts difficult, especially when you see [...]
An increase in deaths in Arizona over the winter caused an increase in probate and trust administration. DeAngelis Legal continued to provide assistance to family members with these administrations from the preparation of simple Affidavit of Small Estates and Informal Probates to more complex situations requiring Formal Probates and difficult trust administrations. Each situation is [...]
DeAngelis Legal prepared the estate plan for a young couple with generational wealth. This project was made more complicated by one spouse’s interest in four irrevocable trusts and a myriad of out of state family businesses gifted from the spouse’s parents. While the couple’s planning was simple, DeAngelis Legal assisted the spouse understand her rights [...]
DeAngelis Legal represented a Scottsdale estate planning client with the decanting of his parent’s irrevocable trust. The client is a current beneficiary of the trust, but wanted to clarify the terms upon which his children as secondary beneficiaries would receive its assets, especially because one child had special needs. DeAngelis Legal prepared the new trust [...]
DeAngelis Legal assisted two new clients to open informal probate to transfer assets out of the deceased person’s name. In both situations, the deceased person failed to transfer the asset to their trust and the account custodian (one a financial institution and the other a title company) required “Letters of Personal Representative” before they would [...]
