Broward Estate Planning Lawyers

In 2010, the estate tax was replaced by a capital gains tax in order to get additional money from owners of real property and stocks with very low-priced basis.

In 2011, the estate tax will return with a vengeance. The level at which all estates will be taxed at will be a measly 1 million dollars. 1000000 dollars sounds like a lot of money but it’s really minor when you consider that it includes life insurance proceed, the your home, your stocks, bank accounts, retirement savings account,  jewelry, art, and anything else that you may have had titled in your name when you passed away.

After all of your assets are probated and assigned a dollar amount, your family will be taxed at the rate of 55 percent for everything over the first million. That means that they will be forced to pay 55 cents tax for every dollar you left to them.

This tax has bankrupted families.

When Joe Robbie died, he left the Miami Dolphins and their stadium (formerly known as Joe Robbie Stadium) to his children. He did not have a trust in place at the time he died. Since he owned all of his assets in his own name at death, the team and the stadium were probated and nine months after his death, his children were handed a tax bill for $50,000,000.

Almost all of Joe Robbie’s net worth was in the team and the stadium so the kids couldn’t raise the cash. and the Robbie kids were forced to sell the team and the stadium for fifty cents on the dollar just in order to pay the tax bill.

A lack of estate planning is the reason that the Dolphins now play in Sun Life Stadium.

A similar situation took the Chicago Cubs away from the Wrigley family. When the estate tax bill came due, the Wrigley kids were given the option of selling the chewing gum factory or the baseball team.

Since chewing gum is more profitable, they sold the team to pay the estate tax.

The estate tax doesn’t just affect millionaires; it also has taken many a farm from the unsuspecting and unprepared farmer. Many farms are worth seven or eight million dollars but the people that run them live month-to-month and do not consider themselves to be millionaires. Often, a lack of life insurance and estate planning leads to a farmer leaving the farm to his family, along with an estate tax bill of around $4 million. And since the kids can’t pay the bill, they are forced to sell the family farm.

A lack of estate planning could lead to the financial destruction of your family. Don’t let the estate tax take away all of your hard work. You can protect your family with some very basic estate planning techniques.

To learn more about protection your family from the looming death tax, and to schedule your free estate planning consultation, please contact the estate planning attorneys of  Wild Felice & Pardo, P.A. at 954-944-2855 or via email at info@wfplaw.com.  Let us protect what you value most.

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