Last month, I wrote about a spate of funerals my wife and I attended.  Since then, I recently found out that a close friend and colleague in his early 60s was diagnosed with a “butterfly glioblastoma,” a rare and aggressive form of brain tumor. It’s a recent diagnosis, and his treatment plan is being finalized. A few friends and I drove an hour and a half to take him out to lunch earlier in the week,

I thought the IRS gifting rules were pretty straight forward and I understood them.  Any individual can give $19K (in 2025) to anyone else w neither a gift tax or reporting requirement.  Seems pretty clear.
Then I dug a little deeper online which was maybe a mistake and came up w some issues.
One was the IRS reference to “gift splitting” by spouses where one spouse can use the other spouses gift exemption to gift in excess of the $19K. 

Often when a person dies the surviving spouse or executor receives huge medical bills from the last illness or accident of the decedent. Hopefully most of such final medical expenses are covered by medical insurance but as anyone who has been tasked with dealing with the after death financial matters knows this is a long, complex and time consuming process.
Any medical expenses of the decedent not paid before death are by default liabilities of the decedent’s estate.

I have an irrevocable trust with my brother as my co-trustee. I would like to replace him with my son. Is there a simple way to do that, or should I contact an attorney?

WHEN STEWART MOTT graduated college in 1961, he received $6 million from his father, an auto industry entrepreneur who was one of the founders of General Motors. On top of the $6 million, a family trust began paying Mott an annual stipend of $850,000.
That allowed Mott to spend his adult life pursuing a variety of eccentric endeavors. He funded research on extrasensory perception. Inside his Manhattan apartment, he built a 10,000-square-foot garden, along with a chicken coop.

https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/ed-slott-how-roth-iras-can-help-with-estate-planning?utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AdvisorDigest&utm_content=None_62149&utm_id=32158

Here is the link to Christine Benz of Morningstar interviewing Ed Slott, who many consider THE expert in the country on the IRS’s interpretation of IRA laws/rules for 2025.
Ed is a gold mine of information as to how to decide on whether to convert traditional IRAs to Roths, and it’s effect on your beneficiaries.
https://app.mscomm.morningstar.com/e/er?utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningDigest&utm_content=None_62004&utm_id=32087&s=1258972516&lid=91893&elqTrackId=894e84e4e6dd4e4ea71a9bc97420afd2&elq=c1c50cb96d48485491b4d81fbe5a229d&elqaid=62004&elqat=1&elqak=8AF55770D8A5B2AC19A42DE86CB56351215EDD04764F052A1F72EA4FA79B9C459194

LIKE OTHER FOLLOWERS of HumbleDollar, I look forward to Jonathan’s Saturday articles. I have to admit that my interest has been heightened by his cancer diagnosis. Not many folks would have the courage to write about what’s going through their mind when they’re fighting for their life. We don’t often get this kind of insight into someone’s life.
Jonathan has probably received a lot of advice about treatment plans and the doctors he should see.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE familiar with what happens with Social Security benefits when someone dies. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a long, painstaking battle to get the payment to which your loved one was entitled. I found this out the hard way.
My father-in-law Bernard died in September 2015. My wife was his executor and the agent under his power of attorney (POA). But I’d earlier served as POA and executor for my mother,

I TURN AGE 62 IN January—which means I could claim Social Security retirement benefits and perhaps collect at least a few monthly checks before I succumb to cancer.
But is that the smartest strategy? One of my top priorities is ensuring Elaine is financially comfortable after I’m gone, so I want to make sure she gets as much from Social Security as possible.
We got married in late May, a few days after I was told I had lung cancer that had metastasized to my brain and elsewhere.

IT WAS 1982 OR thereabouts. After attempting to be a landlord for several years, I decided it wasn’t for me. I sold the house and the four-family apartment building I’d been managing.
The final task in closing out this adventure would come at tax time. Keeping the books was the one aspect of being a landlord that I didn’t mind. I understood how accumulated appreciation would be recaptured and how capital gains tax would affect that year’s taxes.

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG adult, my parents sat me down and explained that I might at some point inherit money from my grandfather’s trust, which had also helped put me through college. My grandfather passed away in 1984, and his wife—my father’s stepmother—became the trust’s beneficiary.
My father was an only child. The trust stipulated that, if his stepmother died before him, he would receive two-thirds of the trust, while my two siblings and I would share the other third.

Five non community property states – Alaska, Florida, Kentucky, South Dakota and Tennessee, currently allow married couples to create community property trusts (CPT).
The benefit of a CPT is the potential income tax savings to a surviving spouse via the full ‘step-up’ in basis of a home or other trust assets that occurs when the first spouse dies when assets held in the CPT are later sold.
There are likely a lot of negatives to establishing a CPT including complexity,

When we set up our Trust our lawyer instructed us to change our children as our secondary beneficiaries to our Trust. I was just reading Ed Slott’s The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks LOUDER, and he states that there is no reason to have your trust named as a beneficiary for most people unless you have questions about the recipients responsibility. Also notes that your beneficiaries may have to empty the trust in less than 10 years.

My wife and I just had our wills and POAs redone. We changed our domicile form PA to NJ a few years ago, and it was recommended we have them updated. I was surprised how different some of the documents were from state to state. For example, NJ has an 11 day period before a will can be probated, starting form the date of death. PA does not have that. The Medical POA and Advanced Directive was very narrative driven;