Missives

A spousal rollover is when the surviving spouse, named as the designated beneficiary of his/her deceased spouse,  can move the deceased spouse’s traditional IRA funds into his/her own traditional IRA.

Take-Away: For married individuals who want to plan for a basis adjustment on death, consider the potential use of a community property trust that is now available in 5 states (but not Michigan.)

Michigan’s state estate tax was what was informally called a ‘pick-up transfer tax’ in that its state estate tax was equal to the amount collected on the federal estate state tax credit that the IRS then allowed, i.e., money that would have been paid as a federal estate tax was instead paid to Michigan.

Moving title to real property into or out of a trust can possibly trigger an uncapping of the real property’s state equalized value if rules and definitions are not closely followed and small steps are not taken.

ESG considerations in retirement plan investment options has come under heavy scrutiny (not to mention both political posturing and threats) over the past decade.

We were told that the OB3 tax law changes were permanent. But no one really believes that these taxes are really permanent, or that they can plan their estates knowing that these tax laws will never change.

The Committee for Responsible a Federal Budget (now there’s a committee with a lot of work ahead of it!) recently calculated that the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted sometime in 2032.

While the Michigan Trust Code uses both a one-year statute of limitations in which to bring a breach of fiduciary duty claim against a trustee, and a five-year statute of repose if the one-year statute does not apply, both periods may be curtailed by the trustee’s affirmative equitable defense of laches.

One such common law rule, or principle,  is that when a Will is ‘lost’ and a copy of that Will is offered for admission to probate as the testator’s last Will, there is a legal (evidentiary) presumption that the testator destroyed his/her Will, in effect, he revoked that Will.

A decedent’s revocable trust can be subject to the claims of the settlor’s creditors where the trust was established as a revocable trust but was rendered irrevocable at the settlor’s death when the settlor’s probate estate is insufficient to pay those claims.