FEBRUARY 10, 2014 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 6
Last week we gave you short definitions of some common estate planning terms, like “will” (and “pourover will”), “trust” (including both “living” and “testamentary” trust), “grantor trust” and more. This week we want to continue that project with another batch of common terms:
Durable power of attorney — sometimes called a “financial” or “general” power of attorney. The key is that the power of attorney continues (or becomes effective) even if you become incapacitated. This is simultaneously the most important and most dangerous document that most people will sign with their estate planning. Why dangerous? Because it gives such broad, mostly unchecked power to someone else to handle your finances.
Living will — a document by which you give directions about how you would like to be cared for (or what care you would prefer not to have) at the end of life. That’s not the only time the living will is effective (or important), of course, but that’s what people usually think of. This is the document you might sign to direct that you not receive artificially-supplied food and fluids at a time when you are no longer able to make decisions yourself. OR you might direct that you DO want food and fluids (and/or other care) provided in such a situation.
Health care power of attorney — you can designate someone else to make medical decisions for you if you become unable to make or communicate decisions yourself. That person is called your “agent” or “attorney-in-fact,” and the document that names them is your health care power of attorney. That’s the term usually used in Arizona, by the way — other states might use different terms for the same concept.
Advance directive — any document by which you provide for medical decision-making in the event that you become incapable is called an advance directive. The most common advance directives are health care powers of attorney and living wills, but there are others. In Arizona, for instance, you might have an advance directive about mental health care decisions, or rejecting resuscitation measures, or even giving someone authority to decide when you should stop driving. These are a little bit more specialized, and you should talk with your attorney about them.
UTMA accounts — UTMA stands for “Uniform Transfers to Minors Act”, and it refers to a law that has been adopted in some form in every American state. It amounts to a simple sort of mini-trust set out in the law — rather than pay to have a trust set up for a minor, you can simply make a gift to a UTMA account. That makes it easy and inexpensive. It also means that you are stuck with the terms of that legislative trust, but it’s one way to make gifts to children and grandchildren.
529 plans — as long as we’re writing about children and grandchildren, we should mention these popular methods of making gifts. “529” refers to the section of the Internal Revenue Code which both permits and governs these accounts. Once again, it is a simple and inexpensive way to make a gift to your child or grandchild, provided that the primary purpose of your gift is to pay for future educational costs. Ask your attorney (and also your accountant and financial planner) for more information and direction if this idea seems appealing.
“Crummey” trusts — sometimes called “irrevocable life insurance trusts” (or abbreviated as ILITs), these trusts are a method of transferring assets (often, but not always, life insurance) to future generations without making the gift outright and absolute. The nutshell version: you make a gift of less than the annual exclusion amount (see below) to a trustee, and the trustee notifies the beneficiary that they can take out the gift. When they don’t remove the gift, for tax purposes the transfer is treated as having been made by the beneficiary, so the gift is deemed to have been completed. These trusts are often used to allow gifts of the annual premium amount for life insurance, or to make gifts without giving the beneficiary a chance to misspend the gift.
Annual gift tax exclusion amount — there is a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about this concept. In 2014 you can make a gift of up to $14,000 to any person without having to explain yourself to the Internal Revenue Service or anyone in the federal government. Your spouse can do the same thing — even if it is your money that funds the gift. You (and your spouse, if he or she participates) can do the same thing for as many individuals as you’d like. Here’s the misunderstanding part, though: if you give, say, $20,000 to one person, that doesn’t mean you pay an gift tax, or you have to get government approval. It just means you have to file a gift tax return — and if the amount you total up from all of those returns over your lifetime gets to $5,000,000 (it’s actually more than that, but we’re trying to make this simple) then you might have to pay a gift tax. This $14,000 figure, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with Medicaid eligibility (yes, you can make a $14,000 gift — but it might make you ineligible for Medicaid even though it’s blessed by the IRS).
And, finally, this perennially popular concept/term:
EINs — “Employer Identification Numbers” are issued by the Internal Revenue Service for probate estates, trusts, and other entities that might have to file income tax returns. When someone asks for your “TIN” they mean that they want either your individual Social Security Number or the appropriate EIN. Even if the trust or estate does not have employees (and even if it never will) it still gets an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Does your trust need to have an EIN issued? That is an enduringly popular question, which we have addressed several times before (and undoubtedly will again).
