According to a recent article from SmartMoney.com, “One straightforward estate-planning tool is a simple gift, taking advantage of the annual $13,000 per person (or $26,000 per couple) gift exclusion. Some parents opt to give that gift in stock rather than cash, which lets the recipient enjoy the profit if stock prices rise. But after the 2009 surge in the market, other people may prefer to wait until death to pass along stocks that have risen sharply; with that arrangement, the recipient may be able to avoid paying taxes.”

California estate planning lawyers can help you understand and plan your gifting to avoid taxation on stocks or cash gifts. Gifting stocks may not be a bad idea in this market — while the value of stocks dropped to staggering lows across many corporations traded on the NYSE, many are on the rise in the first quarter of 2010. Given the pendulum-like nature of stocks, someone gifted stocks after your death may be able to cash them out and enjoy the liquid assets after you pass away. In the meantime, however, that is to say, before you die, gifting the stocks will allow them to continue to increase in value. This means more value for the recipient of the gift — and if you gift to a minor child, you may be able to take advantage of that increase — tax free — before your final will and testament is being read.

Newport Beach asset protection attorneys can tell you more about how gifting can work in your favor as well as that of your loved ones. If you have an interest in working gifting into your estate plan, contact your California asset management lawyer today.

If you live in California and have been a resident for more than a year, you may want to consider taking advantage of a private retirement plan. A private retirement plan is not like a 401(k) or a Roth IRA. It offers benefits that its counterparts cannot, and it’s worth discussing with your estate planning lawyer in California.

Choosing a retirement savings fund can be a tough choice, but in tough economic times and many unsavory characters in the lending business as well as predatory lenders laying in wait for people to slip up, protecting your retirement earnings has never been more important.

A private retirement plan has much better protection when creditors come knocking. Because what it held by a private retirement fund is considered “essential to your retirement,” the protection it offers is a definite upgrade from an IRA, which will only protect your assets to a certain degree and in specific circumstances.

But there’s news about private retirement funds that make them even sweeter: if you don’t have one set up yet, you may do so… and you can transfer monies and other assets from your IRA into your new private retirement plan and the assets will be protected after the transfer is complete.

Conversely, if you have an existing private retirement plan and you’d like to marry it into your IRA, you may do so, and the assets from the private retirement plan will still have the same protection it did before, so long as there is a paper trail that proves the assets were initially within the private retirement plan. You can work with your asset protection lawyer in Orange County to ensure you have all the proper documentation on file.

It’s food for thought and can offer a great deal of protection and can also avoid “fraudulent transfers” during tough times. It’s worth your time to discuss it with an experienced California business transactions attorney.

As far as personal asset protection goes, an LLC (Limited Liability Company) is probably your best option. So what makes an LLC so great? You hear all the buzz but no one really talks about why the alternative to incorporating is so fantastic.

An LLC offers the same kind of protection that an S or C-corp does, making it extremely difficult for judgments against your company to affect your personal assets. The mistake that small business owners make when setting up an LLC is doing it themselves or online; you just can’t guarantee how well you will be protected personally if you don’t enlist the help of a California asset protection attorney.

In addition to protecting your personal assets by separating you from your company (which sole proprietorships or partnerships do not do), an LLC offers individual business owners to take advantage of the kind of tax breaks that small businesses have access to as partnerships. For company owners that are looking for ways to protect personal wealth and have some of the tax perks they may have enjoyed before they grew out of partnership status.

As good as an LLC may sound, the common mistake entrepreneurs make is assuming without legal counsel that it’s the best fit for them. The only way to know this for sure is to sit with a California asset protection attorney who understands exactly which business type (sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, S-Corp or C-Corp) will give you the best protection and advantages that your company can get the most use out of.

Asset protection is an important part of estate planning as well. If you are a small business owner, you need to consider how an estate planning lawyer in California can keep your assets and estate safe from predatory creditors and those who may file suits against you or your business.

Financial advisors and California estate planners suggest using your 2009 tax return as a guide for any changes you might be considering in 2010 and for the future.

With estate taxes likely being reenacted – at a rate of 55 percent for those estates that are worth more than one million dollars, and with changing conversion rates for Roth IRAs, now is the time to take a look at what kind of return you got (or will be getting) from your 2009 income tax.

Those in the estate planning business, including California asset protection lawyers can tell you that a lot of what you get back in the form of a tax return – if you have a 401(k) or IRA – might be tax free money you’re getting back from the federal government… so it was your money to begin with. This means you may be counting chickens that hatched a while ago. You may want to put this money into trusts or other financial vehicles to help restore what you lost, not as a way to get that flat screen you’ve been wanting.

The idea is to model your estate and other plans for your money and assets after what your 2009 reveals.

Reducing what you pay in taxes from a paycheck might be a good call for your 2010 return. It may not seem fun now, but giving less will mean you owe more next year; but receiving everything in one lump sum at the end of the year often gives people a false sense of “extra money.” In fact, a refund should be used to invest or create wealth for the future and not used for immediate shopping gratification.

With estate tax coming back from the dead in some mere 10 months, many people are in a chaotic whirlwind trying to understand the estates they never really comprehended fully, and trying to fix with duct tape what should have been fixed with proper planning. A Southern California estate planning lawyer can help you understand and plan for the up and coming changes that will affect your estate.

Most financial planners agree that there’s just no way to know for sure what will be heading down the pike for estate tax law. But what all California estate planners and attorneys across the nation agree on is the need to stay in the know.

Financial planners suggest reviewing and renewing your estate plan at least once every four to five years. But in the wake of these changes – and potential changes – it’s wise to have a discussion with your Newport Beach estate planning attorney as soon as possible if you haven’t had the chance to prepare for what may be the biggest hit to estate plans in more than a decade.

Discuss ways to “ironclad” your estate as much as possible before the end of 2010. Even those with phenomenally planned trusts won’t necessarily be safe. You need to know what you may be facing. Contact your Southern California estate plan lawyer today and start readying your estate for the estate tax transition.