Katharine Paljug is a financial writer and editor with over a decade of industry experience. Her writing has covered nearly every aspect of the financial world, from investing in forex to paying for ...

When you purchase life insurance, the real goal is to make sure your loved ones are financially protected after you’re gone. Choosing your primary beneficiary — the person who will receive the ...

Following our series on how to serve and protect yourself as a trustee for your family, it only makes sense to talk about the other side of the equation ─ being a beneficiary. Unlike trustees, who ...

Beneficiaries who inherited any time before 2020 will follow the old rules, from prior to the SECURE Act, under which they still may qualify for a stretch IRA. In addition, spouses are largely ...

When a trust is created, three distinct roles define how it functions: the grantor, the trustee and the beneficiary. The grantor sets up the trust and contributes the assets. The trustee manages those ...

Here’s a question I get at least once a week: “I’m dealing with a trust that holds an inherited IRA. Can the trustee transfer that IRA out to the individual ...

The new proposed RMD regulations could create headaches for successor beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts. A successor beneficiary is someone who inherits a retirement account from the ...

Life insurance can be an excellent estate planning tool to ensure succession, provide for loved ones, and create liquidity in your estate. However, understanding the estate duty implications of life ...

Most people should consider having one or more trusts in their estate plans. To make decisions about trusts you must be aware of trust terminology and basic concepts about the most common types of ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...