When celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain died, his will contained a directive leaving his frequent flyer miles to his estranged wife to “dispose of in accordance to what she believes to be his wishes.” Bourdain’s frequent flyer account was almost assuredly large. He built the latter half of his career as a globetrotter, traveling the world sharing meals and exotic food experiences. Though most people probably don’t have as many frequent flyer miles as Bourdain,

The fiduciary rule, a regulation that required financial advisers to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own, is now dead. Enacted in 2016 after five years of development in the Department of Labor, the fiduciary rule was slated to go into full effect in 2019. But a federal court of appeals made a decision that voided the rule, finding that the Department of Labor overstepped its authority.

Are your parents adequately prepared for retirement? If not, are you planning to help them out? In many families, one or more adult children will step up to help Mom and Dad when they can no longer safely take care of themselves. That could mean time away from your family and job or pitching in financially to cover a variety of expenses.

At any age, the death of a parent is a difficult experience. But these days more adult children are dealing with an added stressor: the realization that Mom or Dad died with debt. In the past decade, there’s been a steep increase in debt among senior households. According to a report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, half (49.8 percent) of families age 75 and older have debt, averaging $36,757. Most senior debt is tied to

Lower income tax rates make this an attractive time to convert your traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. By converting, you’ll pay taxes on those funds now instead of at some future (likely higher) rate. The main hurdle will be paying taxes owed. If you convert $50,000 from a traditional IRA to a Roth, your taxable income will increase by $50,000. If you’re in the 24% tax bracket, that amounts to $12,000 in taxes owed. That

Artists and their families have unique needs when it comes to estate planning. Be aware of the following strategies to protect the value of an artist’s work during and after his or her lifetime: Copyright eligibility. The first step is understanding what constitutes a copyrightable work. Protection is available to original works that are either written or otherwise recorded, including literary, musical, artistic and certain other intellectual works. These categories are to be interpreted broadly and can

Today, 77 percent of Americans go online every day, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, and most of us maintain at least some kind of digital data in the cloud. We save emails, post to social media, and store photos in online albums. All of this digital information has created a new issue for you, your heirs, and the technology firms that hold your assets. The key concern is maintaining your privacy and security

As the tax reform measures were unveiled, members of the charitable community expressed alarm that the new rules could create a disincentive to donate. With the larger standard income tax deduction ($12,000 for an individual filer and $24,000 for a married couple), fewer people will realize the benefits of itemizing. Some charities fear that, absent the tax write-off, fewer people will give. Yet others argue a household’s higher net income will be a boon to non-profits.

Your current financial plan may include wealth transfers to grandchildren, great-grandchildren or other descendants, and these gifts may be subject to a generation-skipping tax (GST). The GST was created to prevent families from essentially “skipping” a generation’s worth of estate taxes as wealth is passed down. In 2017, the GST exemption (the amount that can be transferred to grandchildren without incurring a federal GST tax) was $5.45 million adjusted for inflation. Now, under the new tax

The new tax reform package increases an individual’s lifetime exemption from roughly $5.5 million to $11.2 million, with an expiration date of December 31, 2025. For individuals who don’t expect to die in the next eight years, your gift strategy could include protecting assets from future estate taxes while still maintaining adequate resources for your lifetime. You may, for example, choose to max out your lifetime exemption now, while you are still alive, to minimize the