Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6A
-FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS—WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 27, 1985
SAVING THE
STATUE OF LIBERTY
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To some students, the helicopter’s landing was intriguing -others, hurt their ears. Delores Nichols, another fifth grade teacher, helped students with papier mache.
Students give up ice cream for ‘Miss' Liberty
By Dawn Holcomb
Staff Writer
It was a morning for celebration Friday at Cumming
Elementary School as students from kindergarten age
on up waited anxiously for Channel 11-Alive’s heli
copter pilot Bruce Erion to land.
The students worked hard for this day. According to
Ron Brooks, principal of the school, “they even gave
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Kristine McGuire, Julie Wolfe, present Brooks with a certificate.
Estate planning is not for the novice
Changing Times
Your estate plan can be just as
mortal as you are. The will or trust
arrangement you made only a few
years ago may be outdated.
For detailed suggestions on
changes, you should talk with an
attorney who is knowledgeable about
estate planning. But first, ask your
self these questions to spot some
needs:
• Have you had any more children?
Are they covered by the provisions of
your will, trust papers, or life insur
ance policies?
• Are your kids grown up? You may
not want to delay distribution of your
assets to your children for as long as
you originally planned.
• Should you adjust the heirs’
shares of income and assets to recog
nize present realities, such as their
respective financial situations?
• Are your original executors and
trustees still the best choice?
• Do you still want that bank or
trust company as trustee or co
trustee? What’s their current invest
ment performance and trust adminis
tration fees?
• Have you divorced or remarried?
Court orders might affect property
rights or use of life insurance for
child or ex-spouse support. Divorce
or remamge can also affect estate
planning and your children. For ex
ample, you might appoint a new
spouse as trustee of a child’s educa
tion fund.
up their ice cream money.”
What the excitement was all about involved the
students: and faculty’s participation in the Statue of
Liberty fund of which 11-Alive is a sponsor.
By collecting aluminum cans, saving cereal box tops
and “giving up their ice cream money,” students
raised more than S7OO for this project.
Jazzercisers gathered Sunday, Feb. 17, for a four
hour “Jazzerthon” where they brought in $865 to add to
the students’ collections.
• Have you gone into business for
yourself or acquired substantial busi
ness interests?
You may need a special estate plan
providing, for example, buyout of
your share rather than leaving it to
your spouse, a trust to handle man
agement, or distribution of the pro
ceeds if the business is to be sold. You
may need additional life insurance to
pay estate adminstrative expenses
and taxes to avoid a forced sale of the
assets of the business.
• Are you worth a lot more now?
Though you can bequeath as much
as you like to a spouse free of federal
estate tax, you’ll still need to mini
mize the tax on the assets that the
surviving spouse will eventually
leave to his or her heirs.
That bequest falls under the gen
eral provisions of the law and is
limited to an exemption of $400,000 for
someone who dies in 1985, $500,000 in
1986, and $600,000 the next year.
Before concluding those ceilings
are high enough for you to slip under
without paying any estate tax, con
sider the fact that such major assets
as life insurance proceeds and the
equity in your home might be added
to your estate. So, too, is half the
value of any assets you own jointly
with your spouse.
• Do you have too much jointly
owned property?
Joint tenancy with the right of
survivorship provides that when one
owner dies the property goes directly
to the other without passing through
the time-consuming and expensive
probate proceedings for settling es
tates.
But for people with large estates,
sharing assets through joint own
ership between husband and wife
might defeat arrangements made to
minimize estate taxes.
• Are you taking full advantage of
gifts as a tax-saving device?
You can give any number of people
up to SIO,OOO each a year, thus reduc
ing the size of your eventual estate
without paying any gift tax.
A husband and wife can make joint
tax-free gifts of up to $20,000 per
recipient per year. Amounts over
those levels must be added to your
estate for tax purposes.
•Have you moved to another state?
If so, check how your will and trust
provisions are affected by the new
state’s laws. A move can necessitate
a substantial change if you continue
to own property in the state you left;
your will might have to be probated in
both states.
• Have the tax laws changed?
The Tax Reform Act of 1984, the
Tax Reform Act of 1976, and the
Economic Recovery Act of 1981 all
affected federal estate- and gift-tax
law in significant ways. Have your
attorney describe the changes and
their relevance to you.
• Are you taking steps to avoid
probate?
In general, any asset owned en-
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The amount of the check given and presented to
Bruce Erion amounted to $1,609. 34. “We’ve landed the
helicopter at a lot of schools and picked up a lot of
money but this is the largest amount we’ve received to
date,” said.
On hand for the special event and to present Brooks
with a certificate for the efforts put forth by the school
were Julie Wolfe, public information coodinator and
Kristine McGuire, research coordinator, both rep
resenting the southeast region Statue of Liberty-Ellis
Lols Garner, Julie Wolfe, Ron Brooks, Bruce Erion, Kristine McGuire and R. Otwell
Financial planning
How a plan is developed /
□ Gather personal financial data
□ Define personal objectives
□ Analyze current financial situation
□ Develop alternatives
□ Build specific plan around
Objectives of a plan
□ Minimizing personal risk V ;>v dj ~~ --u lojjf
□ Managing investment and property - llmt
□ Reducing tax burden now and in future ■ j
□ Planning handling of estate /W
Chicago Tribune Graphic; Source Price Waterhouse ~~ py
tirely by you is subject to probate.
Not subject to probate are the pro
ceeds of life insurance policies owned
by you and payable to a named bene
ficiary other than your estate; the
payments from life insurance owned
by the beneficiary (as when one
spouse assigns full ownership of a
policy to another); jointly owned
assets; and property held in trust.
You may want to set up a trust with
the sick spouse as beneficiary and a
trustee who’s close to the family and
who would also be capable of hand
ling the former’s finances.
For more information on this com
plex subject, the editors of Changing
Times magazine recommend that
you do some reading on your own
before seeing an attorney.
Island Foundation, Inc.
Fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Lois Gamer, originated
the project which not only included collecting the
money but the students in the fifth grade class built a
nine-and-one half foot papier mache replica of the
Statue of Liberty and presented a play to students,
parents and teachers Thursday, Feb. 21.
Ron Brooks and the rest of the school were featured
Saturday night on Channel ll’s six o’clock news.
Although they don’t include the 1984
tax-law changes, these three books
provide a good background in the
basics of estate planning:
• “A Family Guide to Estate Plan
ning, Funeral Arrangements, and
Settling an Estate After Death,” by
T.E. Hughes and D. Klein (Scribn
er’s, $15.95).