The probate process remains a mystery to many California consumers seeking legal advice. While most Californians will tell their estate planning attorney that they want an estate plan, which avoids probate, few understand what that really means. Common misperceptions include the belief that (1) avoiding probate avoids estate taxes, (2) trusts eliminate all estate taxes and (3) probates are only required when someone dies without a will (i.e., intestate). The purpose of this…
Read More
Christopher D. Carico has been named by Southern California Super
Lawyers magazine as one of the top attorneys in California for 2010 in the field of Estate Planning & Probate. Only five percent of the lawyers in the state are named by Super Lawyers.
The selections for this esteemed list are made by the research team at Super Lawyers,
which is a service of the Thomson Reuters, Legal division based in Eagan, MN. Each
year,…
Read More
Christopher D. Carico was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2011 in the field(s) of Trusts & Estates (Copyright 2010 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.).
Since its inception in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 39,000 leading attorneys cast almost 3.1 million votes…
Read More
On March 24 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new Bill which would require a minimum 10-year period for grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs). The Bill was proposed, went through committee and was passed by the House in about 8 days. It mirrored President Obama’s “Greenbook” proposal. The new legislation regarding the GRATs is attached to an important Jobs Bill, so it seems likely to pass the Senate as well. As written,…
Read More
This checklist was last revised March 22, 2011. On December 17, 2010, President Obama signed into law new estate tax legislation as part of The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (“TRA 2010”). The bill retroactively reinstated the federal estate tax for 2010; increased the federal estate tax exemption to $5,000,000 per person; increased the federal gift tax exemption to $5,000,000 per person;…
Read More
