I would not have believed it if I didn’t hear it with my own ear. The Colorado General Assembly considered taxing residential property as commercial if that residential property was held in an LLC or other entity. This would result in about a 400% increase in property tax. For now, the proposal did not make […]
Hold on to your hats because this is a tough subject. If your estate plan involves irrevocable trusts, understanding how long-term capital gains are taxed inside the trust is important. In general, federal income taxation is segregated into three broad categories: income, short-term capital gain, and long-term capital gain. An example of income would be […]
There is an old saying that the devil is in the details. The details for an estate plan are funding your revocable trust. It is also the biggest complaint we get from our financial planning friends – we lawyers draft the document and don’t fund the trust. The decision to pay the lawyers to fund […]
Have you used Facebook to break the law? Probably. Your slippery descent into the criminal underworld starts so innocently. Post a funny video. Share a good song. Upload a comic found on another site. These are all everyday Facebook activities. They may also be copyright law violations. Most people have a hazy understanding of what […]
Several laws are currently being considered impacting gun owners. We suggest to our clients to consider making all future firearm purchases (Title I or Title II) in the name of their trust through a trust banking account and a properly executed for 4473 identifying the trust/trustee. On the Federal level, the House has passed H.R. […]
Can my neighbor leave their trash cans outside? Can I build a shed for tools? Can my neighbor install that huge, ugly new fence? Nothing is more uncertain than whether a specific action by a homeowner violates a common interest community covenant running with the land. Homeowner association covenant enforcement is a tricky business. Many […]
When a tree grows and then straddles the land of two property owners, whose tree is it? In Colorado, it depends. The starting point is the tree belongs to the owner upon which the tree first grew. In the Colorado mountains, residential disputes over trees are not all that common because most trees are some […]
Estate planning mistakes can be expensive and happen to even the most thorough of people. This is a list of common estate planning mistakes we have either seen or gathered from sources. Not having an estate plan. What would be a list of planning mistakes if we did not start with the most obvious and […]
Do you really need a revocable trust estate plan? We have no hard and fast rule on this subject because there are additional upfront costs and then continuing costs of a revocable trust plan. The continuing costs revolve around making sure certain assets are in the revocable trust or made payable to the revocable trust […]
The Trump administration is proposing a complete repeal of the Federal estate tax. The federal government currently levies a tax on all assets owned at time of death. Using federal tax credits, the first $5.49 million in assets are exempt from federal estate tax. In return for being subject to the federal estate tax, all […]