Have you heard we have a new estate tax bill? Well, not exactly. But estate taxes were one of the myriad items covered by the Reconciliation Act signed into law on July 4, 2025, unofficially referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill. The estate tax exemption, already at $13.9 million per person in 2025,…
Apartment owners always want to use estate planning strategies to minimize taxes for themselves and their heirs. And, this is sometimes the most exciting estate planning for me as well. However, GOOD PLANNING should also emphasize Vital Non-Tax issues if you want to really benefit your heirs. GOOD PLANNING will help avoid non-tax HAZARDS for…
Every year, the administration puts out a “Greenbook” with revenue (read “TAX INCREASE”) proposals it wants to get enacted in the next year. While it remains unlikely that all, or maybe any, of these proposals will get enacted in 2024 given the divided Congress, many of them should really worry apartment owners. So, if you…
Good estate planning involves two sides of the same coin: Taking the most advantages of OPPORTUNITIES for you and your family; and Avoiding HAZARDS to family wealth. This article briefly explores some of the opportunities and hazards that must be carefully considered by apartment owners in 2024. The Importance of 2024 The 2017 Trump…
If you own real property or other valuable assets, there is great benefit in creating and maintaining a quality estate plan. With proper guidance, drafting, and implementation, your estate plan will be effective to avoid probate, unnecessary capital gains and estate taxes, and court control of your assets at your death or in the event…
My wife, Hinda and I, have a mission – to protect the families of apartment owners from “HAZARDOUS” estate planning. Through our seminars for AOA members, we have had the pleasure to meet with, and review the estate plans of, hundreds of wonderful apartment owners. The “good news” has been how many of them planned…
In mid-May, 2015, a senior Treasury Department Estate and Gift Tax attorney announced that the government will soon issue regulations that will limit, or even eliminate, the ability to use “discounts” to save estate taxes for your family. She projected that the IRS would adopt (or propose) these new regulations before the end of September,…
Most of the many apartment owners we have met after our AOA seminars in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley have already built living trust based estate plans. They cared enough about preserving and protecting wealth for their heirs to already take significant planning steps.