D.K. Arndt, P.C. hosted an Estate Planning Seminar December 8, 2010 at Shooterz in Forest City.  Guest speaker, Bill Stark of Securian Financial Services, talked to participants about the uncertainty of estate taxes.  Bill delivered a great message and kept things light with several jokes.  His best advice is to be active with your estate planning, and to pay attention to congress with the new tax laws.  Your action can be put into 5 categories:

1.  Basic Planning - Make sure you have a will, Powers of Attorney, and a living will or medical orders prepared.
2.  Basic Planning + - For estates that may be taxed, make sure you plan to manage your taxable estate.  Simple steps are to look at how your assets are titled between you and your spouse.
3 & 4 Gift Planning I & II - Look at various uses of gifting some of your assets to beneficiaries to keep assets out of your estate, or set up various trusts to manage your assets for estate purposes. 
5 - Charitable Planning - Setting up various trusts to manage your plans for charitable giving to manage your taxable estate.

The 25 participants attending had great questions regarding the current status of congress and how to plan for the next step of our country's estate tax.  The largest questions had to do with gift planning.  A person can gift up to $13,000 per year, which is not deductible, to another individual without it counting against their estate or being taxed and the person receiving the gift is never taxed regardless of the size of the gift.

We wish to thank Shooterz of Forest City for allowing us to host the seminar at their establishment.  We also thank Joel Twedt, of Securian, who brought us our special guest Bill Stark.

To see pictures of the event, click our FaceBook link to the right of this newsletter.