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| THE DAY I SAW $470,000 FLY OUT THE TAX WINDOW SOURCE: RECER EXPERIENCE. Doing personal estate planning in Arlington, VA, in 1993, I was impressed ... perhaps "depressed" is a better word when, during the course of a single day, I met two widowed women whose estates were highly taxable. One had an estate of $1.6 million and the other had an estate of $2 million. In neither case had their late husbands created a By-Pass Trust. Instead, each husband had passed the entire estate directly to his wife. The bottom line additional tax to be paid at the women's death is $235,000 each ... a total of $470,000. No doubt, each of these husbands was a hard-working, wise and caring man who thought he was doing the best for his wife and family. Probably, neither had the benefit of good advice regarding tax savings. In that community, I found many people whose estates had grown dramatically in the post-war years because of housing inflation and good business practices. I meet many good business people who are not sophisticated in the field of estate planning. Each field, business and estate planning, is a separate discipline. And being good at one does not mean that a person is good at the other. Seeing these two families lose a total of $470,000.00 to taxes impressed upon me the proposition, which I believe, that more money goes to taxes as a result of non-use of the By-Pass Trust than by any other means. If your estate is now ... or may, in the future be, taxable, be sure your By-Pass Trust is authorized properly in your will or in your living revocable trust. If you like, the By-Pass can also be a charitable instrument. You can be sure that your spouse benefits for all of his or her life ... and you can determine that, at the end of her life, our cause receives the funds. Just name "The Foundation" as the ultimate beneficiary of the By-Pass Trust. |
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