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If you have an estate with any number of assets, including a home, real estate, retirement benefits, and bank accounts, passing these along to your heirs can be quite a challenge for them if your will needs to go through probate. Furthermore, having your estate go through the probate courts, referred to as Surrogate’s Court in New York, creates a public record that others can look up and view, creating privacy concerns for your heirs which they may rather avoid.

The good news is that New York probate laws allow individuals numerous ways to pass along the assets of their estate to heirs that can also avoid the timely, and often times expensive, process of passing a will through probate courts. It is important to know that even these means to pass assets outside of a probate court have their own challenges that need to met in order to ensure an easier transfer of assets upon passing away.

One of the more common ways for individuals to transfer their assets upon death is to create a living trust (sometimes called an “inter vivos” or “revocable” trust) works by placing assets into a trust while still alive and then transferring to beneficiaries upon death. The benefit of a living trust is being able to maintain control of the assets during one’s lifetime and then allowing beneficiaries to assume control over the trust with the aid of a trustee.

As of 2018, cross-border families planning an estate will require an investment plan meeting relevant rules to domicile, succession, generation-skipping transfer, and gift tax laws in each country where distribution will occur at the time of a decedent’s death. International estate planners use investment techniques specific to cross-border transfers and enforceable transfer tax situs rules, domestic and foreign credits, and treaties where they may apply.

Recent Domestic Tax Reforms

U.S. federal Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) tax law reforms in 2018, have modified estate and gift tax lifetime exclusion amounts for:

The last will and testament is an important document an individual creates to spell out his or her final wishes to pass on the assets of an estate to friends, family, and business partners. However, New York probate laws do put limits on the extent to which a person may exclude his or her surviving spouse spouse from a will. Just as in many states, New York does not allow spouses to be cut out of wills, not matter the language contained in the document.

In situations where a deceased person excludes his or her spouse from a will, the New York Surrogate’s Court hearing the case will step in to award a certain percentage of the estate to the surviving spouse. Just as in a divorce, the law gives certain property rights to spouses to assets like homes, cars, and bank accounts that cannot necessarily be undone by a written document.

Whether or not someone passes away with a last will and testament, the deceased’s heirs must be notified my the executor of the estate that a the estate has been entered into Surrogate’s Court. In order to pass the estate through probate, the executor will need each of the decedent’s heirs to sign a waiver giving up their individual rights to challenge the will and the estate. Although it is usually not an issue to have heirs sign the waiver and agree to the split of the estate, not every situation is harmonious.

In New York, not every estate needs to pass through the probate process in Surrogate’s Court. The law gives this exemption to so-called “small estates” valued under a certain number and provider the executor to the estate handles the process correctly. Although small estates are allowed to pass through a more simplified probate process, executors will still need to perform some of the same duties as if he or she were overseeing a larger estate.

Estates with real property valued less than $30,000 are considered small estates and can avoid the lengthy and expensive formal probate process for larger estates. Even though the asset threshold for small estates may appear quite low, there are still circumstances where even large estates could pass through the small estate probate process. This is because not all personal property needs to be counted towards the $30,000 small estate threshold, thus allowing the more simplified probate process.

Under New York probate laws, only property owned exclusively by the deceased counts towards the small estate probate threshold. What his means is that jointly owned assets like homes, vehicles, and family businesses in two people’s names will not count towards the $30,000 limit. Additionally, only real property like life insurance, an IRA and similar assets with a named beneficiary do not need to be counted as these pass automatically to a beneficiary upon the passing of the deceased policyholder.

One of the most important parts about planning your estate is appointing an executor to oversee an estate and carry out your final wishes which can include passing an estate through the probate court, settling estate debts, and ensuring heirs receive their inheritance. Often times, family members or close friends are asked to serve as executors to estates but in New York, there are only a few restrictions on who may act in this capacity.

Under N.Y. Surr. Ct. Proc. Act § § 103, 707, the basic rules for serving as an executor of an estate are:

• The person is at least 18-years old

With President Trump’s recent immigration reforms impacting the domiciliary status of many New York residents, estate trust administrators are faced with changes to the taxable status of those asset transfers. New York Consolidated Laws, Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) applies specific rules to asset transfer procedure when there is a change in domiciliary of a trust holder. The federal Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides fiduciary income taxation rules for U.S. residents with foreign income (I.R.C. §§ 1, 61), estates, and generation skipping asset transfers (I.R.C. §§ 2001, 2031-2046, 2601). Non-U.S. residents are subject to U.S. income tax from income sourced solely in the country, and are subject to taxation of estate, gift and generation skipping transfer of U.S. situs assets.

New York Rules to Domiciliary

In New York, trust asset transfer falls under three (3) categories of domiciliary: 1) resident, 2) nonresident, and 3) exempt resident.

A recent study suggests that people with moderate to severe anxiety in middle age may be more likely to develop dementia as they get older. The study based its conclusions off of data from four previously published studies that tracked a total of 30,000 individuals over a 10-year period and clearly shows a link between living with anxiety in middle age and developing dementia later on in life.

The findings were published in the BMJ Open, a an online, open access journal, dedicated to publishing medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas. While the study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how anxiety might directly contribute to the development of dementia, it is nonetheless shines light on how mental health is just as important as our physical health as we age.

One of the study’s senior authors believes that dementia may develop after anxiety during middle age because of the increase in and constant elevation of stress hormones may cause brain damages across regions associated with memory. However, that same author is unsure whether treating the underlying anxiety and reducing the levels of elevated hormones would end up reducing the risk of dementia in old age.

The primary benefit of trust and family foundation investment in stock funds, is the transferability of those vested assets to cash. Unlike real property, securities offer wealth enhancement features, as well as a ready source of liquidity. The Securities and Exchange Commission Act of 1934 (“The Exchange Act”) is the legislation binding securities transactions. The Act also applies to rules of securities investment and transfer of shares as part of fund interests or irrevocable trusts within federal and state estate and probate laws.  Section 16(b) amendment of the Act in 1999, improved estate planning benefits of transferable stock options,  no longer requiring stock options to be non-transferable for trust investors to take advantage of tax-exemption rules.

Still, there are qualifying rules for trust investors. A licensed attorney at law experienced at matters of estate planning and probate law can provide professional advice about securities investment and qualifying rules for trust investors.

Qualifying Rules for Trust Investors

In the United States, the inheritance rights of children with unmarried parents are virtually the same as those of children with married parents.

New York estate law allows trust holders to leave property to anyone named in a will, trust, or other joint estate or investment device. Where there is no will or trust naming heirs or beneficiaries, however, estate distribution of assets is left up to the courts. For children of unmarried parents, this latter scenario can lead to lengthy probate litigation. Unmarried parents who have not affirmatively left property in a will, or distributed it in a trust, run the risk of leaving their children a serious legal mess.

The “Illegitimate” Child in Estate Law

The $1.5 trillion tax bill passed last year will likely have far reaching consequences on millions of seniors across the country, some good and some bad. While only time will truly tell how things will shape out, there are a number of areas many tax lawyers and elder law attorneys believe senior citizens and retired persons are likely to see an impact to their finances.

For the most part, the overwhelming majority of elder Americans will not see an increase to their taxes because most senior citizens have incomes that rely on Social Security which for the most part is not taxable at lower levels of income. Furthermore, because most older households do not itemize deductions they are not likely to see an impact because the new tax laws target taxpayer who have major itemized deductions on their taxes, particularly in states where there are high state and local income and property taxes.

The one proposed change to itemized deductions that did not make it into the final draft of the 2017 tax bill was the elimination of deductions for medical bills, a major deduction that would have had far reaching effects on senior citizens. An outcry from AARP, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, the public, and other advocacy groups was successful in preventing any changes to itemizing medical bills and actually expands it for two-years.