Tag: Estate planning
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Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust Benefits
Including a trust that owns life insurance in your estate planning strategy can have the following benefits: MANAGEMENT. If you have a large estate and plan to pass a significant inheritance to children, an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT) enables you to appoint someone to manage the trust’s assets. The trustee you select could be…
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Hawaiian-Style Estate Planning
Estate planning is the process of protecting that which is important (far beyond simply financial or physical assets) and then passing those important things on to our loved ones and future generations. Many concepts that are central to Hawaiian culture are particularly applicable to estate planning. Starting with the concept of ‘ohana (a very inclusive…
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Beware the Joint Account
A joint bank account with a child can be an efficient, effective, and simple estate planning tool. Either of the joint owners can write checks, and the survivor can continue to use the account after one owner dies. However, a joint account can be fraught with problems if not handled carefully and intentionally. Potential problems…
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Who Should Think About Medicaid?
An unpleasant fact of life is the prospect of needing long-term care someday. Statistics tell us that 70 percent of Americans will need long-term care for some period of time before death. So it is not just possible, but very likely that you or someone close to you will need long-term care. In Hawai‘i, the…
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Start with Why
Lately, I’ve had questions from beneficiaries of trusts asking “why did the decedent make the trust distribution a certain way?” The trust clearly identified who the beneficiaries were, and what they were to receive and how they were to receive it. Unfortunately the trust was silent as to “why” — the underlying reason and purpose…
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Lost in Translation
Did you play the game “grape vine” as a child? You whisper something to someone who whispers it to another, until the last person gets the message. The last person says the message out loud. At best, it is a very garbled version of the original message. Think about estate planning. People tell their attorney…
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After The Pause
I like to call our meeting room where we meet to discuss estate planning “the pause room.” When we enter and close the door, and leave outside all the busy-ness in our lives — we put only the matters relating to estate planning on the table. We pause for about an hour, and concentrate solely…
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Legal: Siblingship
siblingship [sib-ling-ship] noun (November 9, 2013): 1. The state of being related or interrelated 2. A state of affairs existing between one of two or more individuals having one common parent. You will not find this word in the dictionary — it is a new word as of November 9, 2013. It describes the unique,…
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Estate Plans Explained
How Can I Be Sure My Family Won’t Fight After I’m Gone? Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to guarantee that there will be no fighting among your loved ones after you are gone. There are plenty of difficult emotions to deal with after the passing of a loved one, and conflict can easily…
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The Third Guarantee: Change
An often-heard quote about lifetime guarantees is the one about death and taxes. I would suggest that there is a third guarantee — that life changes. Nothing stays the same. So, once you’ve completed your estate plan, you’ll want to review it every so often to address life’s changes. What could a review with your estate planner…