You Can’t Do That! 5 Prohibited IRA Transactions.

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5 (of many) things you cannot do with your IRA – ever:

1. Transfer an IRA to a spouse. Unless incident to a divorce judgment, you may not transfer an IRA to your spouse. Doing so creates a taxable distribution. (Oh, and you can’t transfer it to anyone else either.)

2. Retitle your IRA to your trust for estate planning purposes. Only individuals can own an IRA. Your trust is not an individual. So, changing the owner of your IRA from you to your trust is a taxable distribution.

3. Pledge your IRA as security for a loan. You are not allowed to use your IRA as collateral for a loan. If you do, you’ve made a “deemed” distribution from the IRA, a taxable event.

4. Lend money from your IRA to yourself or a family member. IRAs are prohibited from lending money to any “disqualified persons.” “Disqualified persons” include the account owner, members of the IRA owner’s family, and certain business entities owned by the IRA owner.

5. Invest IRA funds in collectibles. “Collectibles” include artwork, antiques, gems, stamps, and coins (with certain narrow exceptions). Any IRA funds invested in collectibles are deemed to have been distributed from the IRA, a taxable event.

Generally, when IRA assets are used in a prohibited transaction, the IRS treats them as having been distributed from the IRA on the first day of the year in which the transaction took place. The amount of the distribution must be included in the IRA owner’s income for that year and, if the owner is under age 59½, early distributions penalties will apply.

Estate Planning For The Here and Now

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Estate planning clients tend to focus on the “when I die” issues when tending to their estate planning. However, if all you have done is sign a will and trust to order your affairs and distribute your property after you die, your estate plan is seriously deficient. Death is a certainty, but incapacity at some point during your lifetime is highly probable. And failing to plan to maintain continuity and management of your medical care and financial affairs during a period of incapacity can have disastrous consequences.

You must include tools in your estate plan to allow others to handle your personal and financial affairs during times when you cannot do so yourself. If you don’t, a court will be required to appoint a guardian to handle decisions concerning your person, and a conservator to manage your assets. This can be a time-consuming, expensive, and burdensome proposition.

So, what should you include in your estate plan to protect you during a period of incapacity? At a minimum, a durable power of attorney, a medical power of attorney, and a HIPAA medical authorization. Let’s look at each:

Durable power of attorney. Under a durable power of attorney, you appoint an agent to handle your financial affairs if you become incapacitated. Everything from banking and bill paying to preparing and filing tax returns on your behalf can be handled by your agent. Your agent will be able to access bank accounts, make sure your bills are paid, and keep your affairs in order until you regain the ability to do so. A durable power of attorney can be designed to take effect the moment you sign it, or at some point in the future if and when you become incapacitated.

Medical Durable Power of Attorney. Commonly referred to as a “patient advocate designation,” Michigan law allows you to appoint someone (your “patient advocate”) to make medical treatment decisions for you in the event you cannot make them for yourself. Your patient advocate can access medical records, talk to your doctors and make treatment decisions for you as long as you can’t make them for yourself. It may contain expressions of your desires concerning medical treatment at the point where your condition is such that there is no longer any prospect of a recovery, such as at the end-stage of a terminal illness. These instructions will ensure that you live your last days in dignity and peace.

HIPAA medical authorization. With a HIPAA authorization, you designate a person with whom medical providers can share your medical information and discuss your medical care. Even with a valid health care power of attorney, a medical provider may refuse to release your medical information to another person. They may refer to privacy restrictions contained in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Doctors, hospitals, and other medical facilities fear the legal repercussions of unauthorized disclosures of one’s medical information. So without written authorization from you, they may not speak with family members, even a spouse or a child, or release medical information to them.

Don’t neglect the here and now in your estate plan. Adding a durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney, and a HIPAA authorization to your existing estate plan will give you protection during your lifetime when you are most vulnerable.

Joan Rivers’s Will Offers a Lesson on the Benefits of a Trust in Estate Planning

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ABC News reveals some of the details of Joan Rivers’s will this week.  The will was filed with the courts on December 5.  The most significant detail being that she employed a trust as part of her estate plan and, therefore, none of the details of her estate – her assets, their value, or who gets what – will likely ever be disclosed.

Any will must be filed with a probate court after one dies.  And as a result of the filing, it becomes a public record, which can be read by anyone, including the media.  And because the probate administration is public, one’s assets and beneficiaries are also matters of public record.   That can result in a lot of unwanted publicity. Wisely, Ms. Rivers chose a different path.

Many people, like Ms. Rivers, don’t want the details of their affairs becoming a matter of public record after they die, so they will employ trusts and other techniques to avoid the publicity inherent in the probate process.  Unlike a will, a trust agreement does not have to be filed with a probate court.  Trust administration typically remains a private affair, the details of which are known only by the trustees and the trust beneficiaries.   And trusts aren’t just for the wealthy or celebrities.  A trust can play an important part of an estate plan as long as it makes sense in one’s particular situation.  As one can see with the will of Ms. Rivers, maintaining privacy by itself can be a significant benefit.

Rivers died on September 4, after she suffered from cardiac arrest during an earlier medical procedure.

Please read the entire article here.

Beware the Trust Mills and Their Peddlers

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A very good Times Herald article sheds light on the problematic practice of non-attorneys pushing estate planning documents on unsuspecting consumers.  Not surprising, this advice is given for the non-attorney’s own financial gain.  There’s big money in peddling “estate plans” on an unsuspecting public.

In Michigan, our State Bar has received numerous complains regarding estate plan salespersons practicing law without an attorney license by giving legal advice. The Michigan Attorney General and the Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Services have received numerous complaints about deceptive sales practices by annuity and life insurance sales persons.  To counter these predators, the State Bar of Michigan Elder Law and Disability Rights Section and the Probate and Estate Planning Section have been promoting “A Living Trust Education Initiative,” the goal of which is to educate Michiganders about deceptive estate planning schemes and what to look out for.

These predators, commonly known as “trust mill peddlers,” use two primary schemes to separate you from your money. The first scheme is a free lunch or dinner presentation under the guise of providing “estate planning” or similar information.  (Who can pass up a free meal?)  The second is the home visit generated by a lead card mailed to you offering free estate planning information that you fill out and mail back to them. Some will even use a combination of the two.

Once they get in front of you, trust mill peddlers will attempt to sell you a trust plan without learning about your situation or your assets and income. They tell you they don’t need to know the specifics of your situation, your family, or how you want your assets distributed after your death, because they know what you need and their trust plan will protect you.  They will often times employ scare tactics to get you to buy their trust plan. Their ultimate goal, however, isn’t to provide you with an estate plan. It’s to get you to purchase expensive annuities, life insurance, and other investment products through the companies they represent, on the basis that the trust plan will work best with these products (which generate high commission income and fees for them).

So, how do you protect yourself from the trust mill peddlers? Most importantly, always rely upon trusted, knowledgeable, and licensed legal, insurance, investment, and tax professionals to help you with your financial and legal affairs. If you do not know any yourself, ask a friend or relative for a referral.  Second, avoid the common tactics used by trust mill peddlers, such as informational meetings including a meal, lead cards sent to you in the mail offering free estate planning information, and non-attorneys coming to your home to sell you an estate or trust plan.

Read the entire article here.