Florida Firearms Law 101: Real issues taught by Florida attorneys
Florida Firearms Law 101
Please help spread the word about or new Florida Firearms Law Class. Below is a description of the class
Protect Your IRA
I just finished my new book Protect your IRA : Avoid the 5 Common Mistakes!
Here is the Table of Contents
The 3 Reasons Most People Experience Confusion with Their IRAs
Non Citizens and Florida Homestead
Florida Homestead for Non U.S. Citizens is possible for two types of Florida Homestead exemptions.
The first homestead exemption is tax based.
If you live in your home and you or your spouse or dependent child is a permanent resident of the state of Florida on January 1s you are entitled to file for a reduction in property taxes.
Florida Court rules that attorney’s fees may no longer be deducted from a spouse’s elected share
The Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled this month that personal representatives of estates are no longer allowed to deduct attorney’s fees from a spouse’s elective share when litigating claims against the spouse’s stake in the inheritance. This holding of this case means that a spouse’s inheritance may now be much larger due to avoiding attorney’s costly fees.
So what exactly is an elective share in Florida? An elective share is a term that describes the portion of an estate that the surviving spouse of the deceased may claim through intestate succession or in place of what the spouse was left in the decedent’s will. Florida passed this law to ensure that no surviving spouse could be left with nothing. In Florida, a spouse is entitled to an amount equal to 30 percent of the elective estate.
Property that can be included in an elective share includes all property subject to estate administration in any state. This can include: joint bank accounts, Totten trusts, property held in joint tenancy, revocable trusts, life insurance policies, pensions and retirement plans, and other property passing directly to a surviving spouse.
41F Published today. Responsible Persons and Gun Trusts
41F was published today in the Federal Register. Here is a link to 41F as filed which is similar to the draft that has been circulating.
41F will be effective 180 days from today or on Wed July 13, 2016. Applications filed prior to July 13, 2016 will be handled under the current rules. Applications filed with the ATF after July 13 will have require a CLEO notification, fingerprints and photographs for each responsible person.
The biggest change for Gun Trusts and other legal entities between 41P and 41F is the change from the CLEO certification to a CLEO Notification for each responsible person. In addition ATF significantly limited the definition of a “responsible person” as compared to what was originally presented in 41P. The CLEO notification in 41F appears to be limited to trustees and co-trustees in most trusts, but can be expanded because of the terms of the trust to also include beneficiaries and others with the ability to manage and possess the NFA firearms. These changes happened after more than 9500 comments were received in response to 41P. – For links to the major comments see our 41P page.
Asset Protection: Can an Irrevocable Trust be Revoked?
Florida Asset Protection Trusts: Can they be changed?
In Florida, both revocable and irrevocable trusts are valuable estate planning tools that permit individuals to organize and protect their assets from creditors. The Florida Asset Protection trust is not used by many estate planning lawyers. Asset Protection is an important part of estate planning in Florida. While the name irrevocable would seem to indicate that the trust cannot be revoked, there are many ways of accomplishing the same effect as revoking a trust.
Generally when one discusses revoking a trust, they are referring to doing one of the following:
Elder Law Update 4th Quarter 2015
News and Important information for Seniors and their Families.
In this issue, we discuss the following topics.
- How to Bulletproof your estate plan
The Doctrine of Dependent Relative Revocation May Just Save your Inheritance
The Florida District Court of Appeals recently applied a little known doctrine called the Doctrine of Dependent Relative Revocation in the case of In Re Estate of Murphy to save an estate from passing through intestacy.
The owner of the estate was Virginia Murphy. Mrs. Murphy died in 2006 and was predeceased by her parents and husband. She also died without any siblings or children. In the years before she passed, Mrs. Murphy executed a number of wills that were prepared by her longtime attorney Jack S. Carney, including the last will she executed in 1994. The 1994 will named Mr. Carey as personal representative of Mrs. Murphy’s estate; and it purported to leave the bulk of that estate to Mr. Carey, Gloria DuBois (Mr. Carey’s legal assistant), and George Tornwall (Mrs. Murphy’s accountant, who died the year before Mrs. Murphy passed away).
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What your Financial Planner needs to know about an IPUG™ Trust
Most financial planners are unfamiliar with some of the modern twists available with irrevocable trusts. They tend to be familiar with the older style of irrevocable trust that can pose several problems for those who use them. These problems include:
- Loss of control over the management of the assets;
- A separate EIN number for tax reporting purposes;
- A larger tax bills because of the way traditional irrevocable trusts are taxed;
- A loss of the step up in basis available to assets owned by an individual upon the death of the settlor; and
- The inability to change provisions or beneficiaries in the future.
The irrevocable trust, you have chosen does not suffer from any of the traditional problems discussed above. It is an Irrevocable Pure Grantor trust (IPUG™). With the iPug™ many of the advantages that are traditionally only found with a revocable trust can be provided in an irrevocable trust. Some may ask, why should we use an irrevocable trust instead of a revocable trust. Here is a summary of the reasons that the iPug™ trust is superior to the revocable trust and does not pose the problems that a traditional irrevocable trust presents:
Does Florida law protect IRAs and SEP-IRAs from Creditors?
NOTE: The US Supreme Court ruled that inherited IRAs are not protected from creditors. Florida has statutes that appear to offer protections for residents of Florida. It is best to plan for no creditor protection for inherited IRAs at this time.
At the Law Office of David M. Goldman, one of our biggest goals is to protect our client’s assets from creditors. One of the most important assets a person can have is a retirement account. These accounts are often targeted by creditors, but the good news is many retirement accounts are protected from creditors through federal and state laws.
So what type of retirement accounts are protected from creditors? The most common form of protected retirement accounts are known as “qualified retirement plans,” and are protected under Federal ERISA law. ERISA protected accounts include traditional pension plans such as 401(k) and 403(b) plans, and these plans are usually exempt from civil court judgments and from bankruptcy. Other protected accounts include Rollover IRA accounts, which are assets, formerly in a 401(k) account, from a previous employer that are “rolled over” into an IRA. This means that these retirement accounts are usually protected no matter what state they were established in.