Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I found this book very useful, but would caution readers that estate taxes and estate laws in various states are moving targets, so you need to be careful to buy the latest update of this book and also visit their online website to confirm you have the most current information possible. Also, if your personal family situation is complex (e.g. second marriage, out of state real estate, such as a rental property or vacation home, or if you own one or more businesses, or have a spouse who is not a U.S. citizen), it would behoove you to use this text to draft the trust (to save money on that part of the process--most attorneys use "boilerplate" anyway, so why pay $250 per hour for that), then pay their hourly rate for a qualified estate planning attorney to review your trust for mistakes or specific language you need to include to cover these specific situations. For example, a common problem that can occur is that you name your trust as the beneficiary of an IRA, but your trust does not include the specific language the IRS and custodian of the IRA need to see in order to "pass through" the IRA to beneficiary IRAs. When this happens, the Inherited IRA can be taxed at the tax bracket of the Trust (instead of the beneficiaries which might be lower), and the IRA must be emptied by the fifth year after the death of the owner. Finally, if you do decide to use an estate planning attorney, be sure to ask them what % of their time is spend on this type of law. Many family lawyers and other lawyers dabble in estate planning. You have too much at stake. Look for an attorney for which this is at least 50% of their business.