Planning for Your Family

By: Laurie Valentine

Planning for how to provide for your family at your death should be a key objective of estate planning and it is good stewardship. The costs of probating and distributing your estate and the amount of death taxes due may be greater if you have not planned well, which means less to pass to your beneficiaries.

For those with children under age 18, thought needs to be given to whom you want appointed as guardian for your children if both parents died before all are 18 or older. The court-appointed guardian will make all the decisions you as a parent would be making for your children until each reaches age 18. You can include a provision in your Will designating who you want appointed as guardian.

A decision also needs to be made as to whether the share you want to leave to a family member will be given to them outright or whether their share should be managed by someone else, either until they get to an older age or perhaps for the rest of their life if they are incapacitated or just not good money managers.

Including a trust provision in your Will allows you to empower another person to manage the share of a family member beneficiary. Usually the trustee is permitted to use the trust income for the beneficiary and may also be authorized to use trust principal for the beneficiary’s health, education and other needs.

Heed Paul’s admonition in 1 Timothy 5:8 and “….provide for [your] relatives, and especially for the members of [your] household…” 

Laurie Valentine is COO and Trust Counsel for the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, PO Box 436389, Louisville, KY 40253; (502) 489-3533 or 1-866-489-3533 (Toll-free, Kentucky Only); KYBaptistFoundation.org

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.

Plan Your Use of Joint Tenancy

By: Laurie Valentine-COO & Trust Counsel 

Many people put everything they own in joint ownership with others so that, at death, no probate court proceedings are required for the other joint owner to have full ownership and control of the assets. “Joint tenancy with rights of survivorship” titling does avoid probate as ownership passes by operation of law to the surviving joint owner, but it should be used carefully.

Your Will does not control who will own jointly-owned assets following your death. That means that even with a carefully thought out “written plan” (a Will) directing how you want what you own at death to pass, any assets in joint names will not be governed by that plan.

Another reason people put someone else’s name on their assets as joint owner is to give them access to those assets in case of incapacity of the original owner. A better plan may be to give them a power of attorney which gives them access to your assets and the ability to use them for your benefit if you become incapacitated without making them a joint owner

Putting others’ names on your assets as joint owner makes them just that…an owner with rights in those assets. That could result in those assets being subject to the claims of that other joint owner’s creditors, if he or she gets into some kind of legal or financial difficulty.

And, if the other joint owner dies first you might be taxed on receiving your own assets back from the other joint owner at their death, depending on their relationship to you.

As with all other aspects of estate stewardship, use of joint tenancy should be planned.

For more information, please call us at (502) 489-3533 or toll free in KY at 1(866) 489-3533.

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.

12 Things to do in 2013-Window of Opportunity Closing!

12 Things to do in 2013-Laurie Valentine #11 

The federal tax bill enacted near the end of 2012 extended the Charitable IRA Rollover provisions through December 31, 2013. There is a good chance this “window of charitable giving opportunity” may close and not be extended after that deadline.

The Charitable IRA Rollover provisions permit a person who is 70 ½ or older to make tax-free outright gifts in any amount up to a total of $100,000 from a traditional or Roth IRA directly to qualified charities. Your church and our KBC and SBC agencies and institutions are “qualified charities”. Private foundations and donor advised funds are not.

You are not entitled to a charitable income tax deduction for your IRA Charitable Rollover distributions. They do, however, count as required minimum distributions.

Act now to avoid missing this valuable opportunity to provide current support to charitable causes important to you.

For more information, please call us at (502) 489-3533 or toll free in KY at 1(866) 489-3533.

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.

Jury Duty

By: Barry G. Allen- President & CEO

I’ve just completed two weeks of jury duty. It was the second time in eleven years I’ve served; I was never summonsed during the first 30 years of my residency. I am appreciative my employer, the KBF, has a very accommodative policy related to jury duty for its employees.

Jury duty is a responsibility for which most citizens have ambivalence. On the one hand we dread the inconvenience and the absence from our daily jobs and routines. On the other hand we recognize the vital importance of the process in facilitating the equitable administration of justice in our community to our fellow citizens – and – we must confess, if we were party to a lawsuit, we would want the jury to include people like ourselves deciding the outcome.

I was selected to serve on the jury of a guardianship case in which we, the jury, had to determine whether or not to take away from an individual all or part of his rights in his personal and financial affairs. What an awesome responsibility that was!

My experience on this jury confirmed everything we in the KBF do to educate, encourage and enable individuals and families to put a plan in place and to execute the necessary document(s) BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE to avoid the human and final trauma and cost associated with the court procedure required for a guardianship trial.

The key document is a power of attorney by which you grant someone of your choosing the power to make personal and/or financial decisions in your behalf should you be temporarily or permanently unable to make those decisions for yourself.

There are three ways the KBF can provide educational assistance in this realm of advance planning: (1) private consultation, (2) provide a brochure on “the right to make informed decisions” and (2) an educational seminar in your church.

Please call us toll free to make the arrangements for a private personal consultation session, request the brochure and/or schedule a seminar for your church or church group. 

For more information, please call us at (502) 489-3533 or toll free in KY at 1-(866) 489-3533

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.