Estate Planning Attorney

Planning for Everyone You Love and Everything You Have

Do you know what would happen legally- to you, your loved ones, your money, and everything else you care about – if something unexpected happened to you?

If you have an estate plan and it’s out of date, your assets could be lost to the State Department of Unclaimed Property, or to an unnecessary Court process.

If you don’t know exactly what would happen for everyone you love and everything you own, then the first step is to find out exactly what would happen, legally and financially, so that you can decide if the current state of your affairs is okay with you.

How Do We Help You With Estate Planning?

We conduct a Legacy Planning Session, where we spend time together and you’ll get informed. Before your Legacy Planning Session, you will complete a Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment, which will help you to get clear about what you own and what you have to think about when it comes to planning for the well-being and care of your loved ones and loved belongings. If you decide the current state of affairs is unacceptable, and if we both decide that it’s a fit to work together, then we can discuss an estate plan designed to address your family’s needs.

The foundation of your estate plan will often include a revocable living trust; you transfer your property into this trust for your benefit during your life. A properly funded revocable living trust may help avoid probate for assets held in it, depending on the circumstances. Tax treatment depends on the assets, current law, and individual facts.

For people with additional needs, we provide advanced estate planning services.

Can I DIY My Estate Plan?

Some online tools use answers to generate estate planning forms. A form may not address every family circumstance, so review whether it reflects your goals and applicable requirements.

We Are Professional Estate Planners

Your Personal Family Lawyer® at AMO LAW will educate you, take the time to get to know you, your family, your concerns, your goals, and your issues, and will gladly and patiently answer all your questions to discuss an estate plan intended to address your family’s circumstances. Planning may help reduce probate involvement or disputes in some situations.

Estate Tax Protection & Planning

You work your entire life to save and have enough money to comfortably retire—and ideally, leave something for your loved ones when you pass away. During your life, you pay all kinds of taxes: income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and so on. And at the end, the government even wants to tax you on the assets you have left at your death.

This is known as the estate tax, sometimes called the inheritance tax or death tax. For families concerned about estate taxes, an attorney who provides estate tax planning services can explain available options. AMO LAW can discuss strategies that may affect tax exposure; results depend on current law and individual circumstances.

How Does the Estate Tax Work?

The estate tax is totally separate from federal income taxes and is paid on the net value of all your assets owned at your death. However, there are fairly sizable exemptions to the estate tax, so it’s primarily high net-worth individuals and their families who are affected.

That said, the estate tax rate is a whopping 40%, so we’re talking about potentially massive sums of money being owed by one’s heirs. And that bill must be paid to the IRS within 9 months of the decedent’s death.

Exemptions to the Estate Tax

Notably, President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 nearly doubled the allowable exemptions to the estate tax, ensuring that even fewer families will be affected:

So unless your estate is valued at more than $11.2 million, you won’t have to worry about the estate tax at this time. But for those who are affected, estate planning strategies may affect the amount owed. Our estate tax planning lawyers can discuss available options for your family.

Advanced Estate Planning Strategies

Families with high-value estates face several complex legal and tax issues—and the estate tax is only one of them. At AMO LAW, we offer a number of advanced estate planning strategies that are primarily aimed at reducing a family’s tax burden. In addition to the estate tax, we also help families navigate the gift tax and generation-skipping tax to pass assets on for successive generations without the risk of estate tax decimating the estate at each generation.

Some of our most popular advanced estate planning tools and strategies include:

Life insurance trusts
Qualified personal residence trusts
Grantor retained annuity trusts
Asset protection trusts
Land trusts
Dynasty Trusts
Family limited partnerships or limited liability companies
Asset gifting

You worked hard to build your family’s wealth and legacy, so it makes sense to put similar effort into protecting those assets—and that includes protecting them against excessive taxes. Contact the estate tax planning attorneys at AMO LAW to minimize the potential tax burden faced by your family, so you can maximize the inheritance you pass to them.

AMO LAW provides estate planning guidance for individuals and families throughout California. We take time to understand your goals, family circumstances, and assets, then discuss planning options so you can make informed decisions. Our offices are in Costa Mesa and Corona, and consultations are available in person or virtually.