Estate Planning Basics

Instead of spending a weekend seminar on estate planning, let this book give you all the information you need in a easy-to-read format to explain the major components of estate planning.

Here you'll learn how to choose beneficiaries, how to plan for young children, create a will, and avoid probate. You see how to reduce estate taxes. You'll be shown how to make a trust even if you're in a second marriage and want your first-marriage children included.

You'll also be shown how to name someone to make decisions if you can't. Take the mystery out of planning your estate with this new book.

214 pages, 8-1/2 x11, $21.99

Contents

1: A First Look At Estate Planning
Choosing Your Beneficiaries
Proving for Young Children
Transferring Your Property After You Die
Estate Taxes
Planning For Incapacity
Making Changes
More Estate Planning Resources From Nolo

2: Your Beneficiaries
Direct Beneficiaries
Alternate Beneficiaries
Beneficiary Complexities
Disinheritance
Talking it Over

3: Children
Naming Someone to Care For Young Children
Naming Someone to Manage Your Child's Property
Choosing How Your Child's Property Should be Managed
Naming Children a Beneficiaries of Life Insurance
Leaving Property to Adult Children
Leaving Property to Other People's Children

4: Wills
Will Requirements
Your Executor
Types of Wills
Probate
Using a Will in Your Estate Planning
Preparing Your Will
Challenges to Your Will

5: Living Trusts
How a Living Trust Works
Do You Need A Living Trust?
Living Trusts and Taxes
Living Trusts and Young Children
Shared Living Trusts For Couples
Making Key Decisions About Your Living Trust
Preparing Your Living Trust Documents

6: Other Probate Avoidance Methods
Pay-On-Death Bank Accounts
Transfer-On-Death Accounts for Securities
Transfer-On-Death Car Registration
Joint Tenancy
Tenancy By The Entirety
Community Property With Right of Survivorship
Simplified probate Proceedings
Life Insurance
Gifts

7: Retirement Plans as Estate Planning Devices
Individual Retirement Programs
Pensions
Choosing Beneficiaries for Individual Retirement Programs
Retirement Plans and Taxes

8: Estate Tax
Federal State Tax Exemptions
State Death Tax
Gift Tax
The Federal Income-Tax Basis of Inherited Property

9: Reducing Federal Estate Taxes
Making Gifts During Life
The AB Trust
Other Tax Saving Trusts
Disclaiming Gifts

10: Property Control Trusts
Marital Property Control Trust For a Second or Subsequent Marriages
Special Needs Trusts For Disables People
Educational Trusts
Spendthrift trusts
Flexible Trusts

11: Planning For Incapacity: Medical Care and Finances
Medical Decisions
Financial Decisions

12: Lawyers:
Will You Need A Lawyer?
Using lawyers
Doing Your Own research

13: Finalizing Your Estate plan
Storing Your Estate Planning Documents
Revising Your Estate Plan

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