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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Strategies for an Uncertain Election Year








How should we deal with the uncertainty of taxe rates this election? Well, the conventional wisdom is that tax rates will rise, no matter who is elected.








A recent Wall Street Journal article by Tom Herman summarizes the positions of each candidate's tax plans:



Capital Gains Taxes:














Monday, June 16, 2008

On "Negative Inheritance"

Boston Elder Law specialist Harry Margolis posts about the idea of what economists call a "negative inheritance," where the costs of care for elderly parents outstrip any "gift" which might ever be received. As he writes, the costs are "financial, physical, and emotional."

Thanks to Louisiana estate planning attorney Laurie Redman of the Louisiana Estate Planning and Elder Blog for bringing this to my attention.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

In my last post, I reviewed one online estate planning product, Docubank, which operates as a "living will" retreival system for health care professionals. I recently became aware of another relatively new service, Estate++.




Estate++ has several services, but is primarily a document storage and retrieval system for estate and financial planning documents. Among other things, Estate++ bills itself as an online "safe deposit box" and an estate and financial planning organizer. In addition, Estate++ allows access on a read-only basis of certain, pre-selected documents to (for example) medical healthcare professionals and family members.




I am not a subscriber to either Docubank or Estate++. Therefore, I have not tested such practicalHowever, based upon my review of the website, examples, and upload