Estate Planning as a Career

While “Estate Planning” is the process of planning to pass assets from one generation to the next, “Legacy Planning” is the next generation of Estate Planning. Estate Planning is the starting point, but Legacy Planning takes it beyond the basics. Legacy Planning recognizes that we are more than the material wealth we have acquired. Our material wealth is just one part of the equation. When we leave this life, we will leave more behind for our children. Perhaps more important than the material wealth is our value system, our guidance, and our protection. While we cannot stay with our families after we are gone, we can pass on our values and continue our guidance and our protection.

We can do this with a Family Wealth Trust. A Family Wealth Trust passes on our legacy, both our material and our experiential wealth. But, it does more than just hand our loved ones a pile of cash. It protects them. There are two levels of protection in a Family Wealth Trust. The first level, a Family Access Trust, provides divorce protection by keeping a child’s inheritance separate from his or her other assets. However, the beneficiaries have unfettered access to the assets.

Here are some of the risks that the Family Access Trust would protect against:

Your daughter marries someone who sees her as his meal ticket. When she puts her foot down, he divorces her, seeking one-half of the inheritance you worked hard to provide her.
Your spouse remarries and then succumbs to cancer. His or her new spouse or significant other seeks to take the nest egg which you worked hard to build for your family.

While giving your beneficiaries unfettered access may seem appropriate for mature, wise beneficiaries, divorce is not the only risk they face in today’s world. If you are interested in greater protection, there’s the Family Sentry Trust. The Famil (more…)

Capital gains tax. Lets look first at the capital gains tax position of a transfer of property. On the assumption that the parent is UK resident and domiciled any transfer of property will be subject to UK capital gains tax. You’ll therefore need to calculate the gain arising and crucially to consider the offset of reliefs to reduce this gain.

It’s worth noting that the residence of the child is irrelevant for UK tax purposes. Therefore, even if they are tax resident in a tax haven, the UK resident and domiciled parent will still have to consider their own capital gains tax position.

As parents are classed as ‘connected’ with their children for capital gains tax purposes, any transfer from the parents to the child is treated as a market value transfer. As such, even though the children don’t pay any proceeds to the parent for the property when calculating the capital gain it is the market value of the property that needs to be considered.

The gain will therefore represent the uplift in value from the date of acquisition or probate value to the market value at the date of transfer. Note if the property was acquired before March 1982 there are special provisions that can apply to deem the cost to be the market value at March 1982.

What reliefs are offset?

It is the reliefs that can significantly reduce any capital gain. The main reliefs that any parent would be looking to consider to reduce the capital gain would be:

• Indexation relief if the property was acquired before April 1998. This adjusts the cost (or probate value) for the effects of inflation up until April 1998
• Taper relief. You’ll need to consider what type of property it is. If you’re looking at transferring a residential property it will nearly always be a non business asset. This will reduce the capital gain by up to 40 (more…)

This is a transcript of a presentation delivered by Certified Manuscript Appraiser Brian Kathenes, May 23, 2003 at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Society Annual Meeting.

Moderator— Steve Carson: with: Chris Coover, Christie’s auction House
and Dr. James Hutson, Director Library of Congress

Presenter:
Brian Kathenes, ISA CAPP
Managing Partner
National Appraisal Consultants
Hope, NJ

It is an honor to speak here at this wonderful institution and before my friends and colleagues of The Manuscript Society.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the program.

“Finding a home for your collection.” — an interesting phrase.

Depending upon the “home” you are considering for your collection, the services of a professional appraiser may be beneficial, or even required.

By the end of my short presentation, you will have a better idea of:

how an appraiser can help you find your collection’s home
when you might need an appraiser
how select the right appraiser.

And, interestingly enough, you’ll probably know more about the appraisal process than most people who call themselves appraisers.

Now, before you even consider retaining the services of an appraiser you need to know one important fact.

Anyone can call himself or herself an appraiser. There are no laws or licensing requirements in any US state pertaining to personal property appraisers. That may seem unusual, especially with the antiques road show craze, but it’s true. It seems that anyone who ever bought or sold an antique or a manuscript is an appraiser.

There are dozens of recent incidents, and court cases, of unqualified people that got themselves and their clients into big trouble by calling themselves appraisers.
You’ve probably read about a few of them in Manuscripts News. We (more…)