What did your estate planning lawyer tell you?

barrykai said:SimpleMoney said:What did your estate planning lawyer tell you?

No lawyer, doing legalzoom.com

Sounds like a good way to guarantee your widowed wife will owe as much taxes as possible after your death.

I agree w/ the idea to ask your estate attorney since sometimes legal things don't agree w/ what ordinary people like us think.
Also agree w/ the fact that "estate" is defined differently for different purposes.

If i had to guess, i would think that since the will is handling the probate estate, and since your retirement acct and insurance
are not going through probate if you name your wife as beneficiary, that they would not be included in your "estate".
Depending on how your house is titled it may or may not go through probate---if in jt tenancy, it probably doesn't so
might not be part of estate either. If it does go through probate, the total value of the house (not just the equity) might be
considered as part of the probate estate.

For federal estate tax purposes, all of your assets would be considered part of the estate though you would get to deduct
the value of the assets given to your spouse upon your death.

barrykai said:Regarding wills, assuming that I make my wife the sole beneficiary of retirement accounts and life insurance, does that become part of the estate or is the estate considered the value BEFORE those payouts? In other words if I wanted to leave 10% of my estate to my children if I should die, are the retirement and life insurance payouts to my wife considered to be part of the estate? What about home equity?
My ex-wife didn't have a Will - she had a WON'T! "That bastard ex-husband of mine will NOT inherit any of my money. That son-of-a-bitch WON'T receive any life insurance payouts. And that evil-doin', FW-readin', m&#$*@ - f#%^@* WON'T get any piece of this friggin' trailer I'm leaving behind.