Description
Model Wills and Trusts
Every estate attorney needs a base of ready answers, clauses, and documents. The larger your collection, the more time you can devote to assessing the big-picture needs of your estate planning clients and applying your judgment and experience. This book contains over 90 forms, dozens of clauses, numerous practice tips and more, all supported with hundreds of recent cases. For example:
More than 40 wills and trusts, including…
- Will for Unmarried Testator With Pot Trust.
- Will for Unmarried Testator With Generation Skipping Trusts.
- Husband’s and Wife’s Wills With Minor’s Trusts.
- Husband’s and Wife’s Wills (Second Marriage) With Immediate Gifts to Children.
- Tax-Planned Wills for Married Couple With Bypass Trust and Outright Marital Deduction Gift.
- Tax-Planned Wills for Married Couple With Bypass Trust and QTIP Trust.
- Qualified Income Trust (QIT) for Medicaid Planning.
- Husband’s and Wife’s Wills With Spousal Special Needs Trust.
- Husband’s and wife’s Wills With Minors’ Trusts and Special Needs Trust for Child.
- Revocable Intervivos Trust for Single Person.
- Tax-Planned Revocable Intervivos Trust for Married Couple.
- §2503(c) Trust.
- Insurance Trust.
- Investment Trust.
Practice Aids
- Use the Client Questionnaire to get your client invested in the process and identify topics in advance that you should be prepared to discuss.
- Avoid problems down the road that cannot be corrected by withdrawal with the Conflicts of Interest Disclosure for Spouses.
- Clarify how you will be paid with the Fee Agreement.
- Prevent incorrect assumptions with the Tax Planning Flowcharts.
- Answer questions in advance, aid client review, and document your advice with these detailed Cover Letters.
Practice Tips
Preliminary concerns
- To protect against a deemed gift, name the spouse as beneficiary of at least 50% of each retirement plan, IRA, or life insurance policy.
All wills
- Wills executed using bank notaries frequently end up with errors on the face of the documents. Discourage clients who want to execute wills by themselves.
- Clients often wish to give the guardian liberal access to the children’s inheritance, but this can create issues of self-dealing or conflicts of interest which then must be addressed in the will. A simpler alternative is to use this clause to ….
- If a testator has children from a previous marriage, he should consider leaving the homestead to the surviving spouse and providing for the children out of other assets. Why? The children may not be able to sell or use the property for some time.
Tax-planned wills
- If the surviving spouse is given a lifetime power to withdraw trust principal, consider limiting the power to an ascertainable standard like health, education, maintenance, and support. This limitation gives the executor of a QTIP trust the flexibility to…. In a GPOA trust, this limitation may provide….
- If a QTIP trust is funded in part with an IRA or Roth IRA, the will or trust document should contain a clause like the following that redefines “income.”
- Texas provides little help to the victim of imprecise drafting, since it has no statute that would effectively limit an otherwise unlimited power. Texas practitioners are thus advised to confine themselves to language specifically permitted by Treas Reg section 20.2041-1(c)(2).
Trusts
- Creditor protection can be undermined by appointing the beneficiary as trustee, giving the beneficiary the right to remove the trustee, or giving the beneficiary the right to compel distributions.
- Clients are often surprised to learn that even with a living trust, an estate tax return must be filed, bypass trusts must be funded, and the heirs may not get all their money until the IRS issues a closing letter.
- If a revocable trust owns a checking account that the settler-trustee uses for personal expenses, he should have his own name printed on the checks.
Medicaid Planning
Chapter 5 contains forms for:
- Lady Bird deeds
- Miller Trusts
- Special needs trusts
Included with the book is access to digital forms via an emailed zip file, containing a searchable full-text of the book as well as all the forms from the book. The forms can be easily accessed and modified with your preferred word processing program. No installation necessary.
Speed is important when you charge fixed fees for creating wills and trusts, but imprecise drafting can lead to costly errors. The book’s drafting recommendations include sample clauses that you may access via an emailed zip file. The issue-oriented text is to-the point, delivered without hedging, and is well-supported with recent cases. Tax considerations, consequences and opportunities are clearly presented and supported with examples. Plus 38 wills and trusts are included for easy access and modification.
REVISION 10 HIGHLIGHTS
Texas Estate Planning provides you with the substantial collection of estate planning documents that every estate planning attorney needs. This book contains more than 90 wills and trusts with alternative clauses and ancillary forms. Lucid text offers ready answers, practical advice, and pitfalls to avoid. The discussion is supported with hundreds of citations to statutes, regulations, and cases. The latest edition of Texas Estate Planning brings you new and updated material—
Non-Probate Assets
- Transfer on death deeds. §2:53
- IRA and QRP distribution options after the participant’s death. §2:142
- Conduit Trusts. §2:150
Durable Power of Attorney
- Hot powers. §4:10
- Agent’s alteration of estate plan (subject to the grant of hot powers). §4:11
- Grounds for refusing to accept. §4:22
- Termination. §§4:60, 4:61
Declaration for Mental Health Treatment
- Purpose §4:183
- Execution requirements. §4:184
- Termination, revocation and disregard of declaration. §4:185
Wills
- Revocation as a result of divorce. §10:56
- Appointment of guardian. §10:111
Tax-Planned Wills for Married Couples
- Exemption amount. §13:02
- Exemption portability. §13:04
- Example: sample tax-planned estate (no portability election). §13:13
- Descendants predecease spouse. §13:263
Trusts
- Problems with using trusts to avoid probate. §20:04
- Validity of pet trusts in other states. §20:197
New and Updated Forms
- Form 2-3, Transfer on Death Deed Form
- 2-4, Affidavit of Death Form
- 4-4, Declaration of Mental Health Treatment Form
- 23-7 Application for Certificate of Title
ABBREVIATED TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Client Communications
Chapter 2 Non-Probate Assets
Chapter 3 Community Property
Chapter 4 Ancillary Documents
Chapter 5 Medicaid-Oriented Estate Planning
Chapter 6-9 [Reserved]
Chapter 10 All Wills
Chapter 11 Wills for Single Persons
Chapter 12 Simple Wills for Married Testators
Chapter 13 Tax-Planned Wills for Married Couples
Chapter 14 Codicils to Wills
Chapter 15 Generation-Skipping Transfer Planning
Chapter 16-19 [Reserved]
Chapter 20 All Trusts
Chapter 21 Revocable Inter Vivos Trusts — Single Persons
Chapter 22 Revocable Inter Vivos Trusts — Married Couples
Chapter 23 Funding the Revocable Trust
Chapter 24 Irrevocable Trusts — Non-Charitable Beneficiaries
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dianne Reis is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Texas School of Law, where she served as an associate editor of Texas Law Review. She is a member of the Real Estate, Probate, and Trust Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, the College of the State Bar of Texas, the Estate Planning Council of North Texas, and the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (National and Texas Chapter). She is currently serving on the Exam Writing Committee of the National Elder Law Foundation.
Ms. Reis is board certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and she is certified in elder law by the National Elder Law Foundation. She has a solo practice in Plano focusing exclusively on estate planning, probate, and Medicaid planning.
Robin Apostolakis is a graduate of The Ohio State University Morris College of Law. She earned an LLM in tax from the University of Houston. She is a member of the Real Estate, Probate, and Trust Law Section of the State Bar of Texas.
Ms. Apostolakis is certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. She is a partner at Stillwell, Earl & Apostolak. She practices in the Houston area with a focus on estate planning, probate, and guardianship.
JustACaJen –
I ordered the book on Monday and received it on Friday. Considering I am a 4-day UPS ship from publisher, that is a very nice turnaround! Everything came in perfect condition and just a quick review of the contents and I can already tell how incredibly helpful the book will be in my practice. I especially like having the digital content available. I can save that on my cloud server and access it from my phone or tablet even if I am out of the office. I am a big “book/paper” person but I like the backup of the disk when I don’t want to lug the book from work to home, etc.
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Law1999 –
This publication is an excellent resource for my practice. I mainly use it to prepare simple wills for clients. It has excellent samples and a considerable amount of explanation on numerous topics for each form. There are also ancillary document forms such as powers of attorney, HIPPA release, medical power of attorney and directive to physician that are helpful. It is also an excellent resource for tax issues and preparing specific gifts in a will. Trusts are also extensively discussed. The book is well organized and the binder is neat and looks great. I also like the CD that comes with the book.
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CalLawTX –
Recently purchased James Publishing’s Texas Estate Planning and the Texas Probate Forms & Procedures practice manuals for my law practice. Both are comprehensive, well laid-out, and up-to-date manuals that are very useful. Each come with an accompanying searchable CD containing the entire content of the book and ready-to-use forms that enable me to be more efficient in serving my clients. The authors have excellent credentials and are practicing Texas attorneys.
Overall, each of these manuals is a very good resource for the solo or small-firm law practice focusing on Texas estate or probate law.
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Mike H. –
I have been purchasing James Publishing books for my law practice for a number of years. I recently undated my Texas Estate Planning book. The materials are concise, helpful and provide forms for Texas attorneys to handle a majority of any estate planning issues for their clients. I have always been pleased with their products.
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Carolyn Crain –
Very helpful and informative!
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