Forbes.com has an interesting article on the importance of estate planning.  The money line is

It's not just for the wealthy, and it's more than a will. There's your medical care, insurance and kids to consider.

England's Prince Harry will soon be 25 at which time he will inherit £6.5 million from his mother Diana's estate.  The value of her estate after her death in 1997 was £21 million, but the estate paid more than £8 million in inheritance taxes.

When a married couple creates an estate plan, they plan for the inevitable – the death of one spouse followed by the death of the second spouse.  The entire estate plan may be designed on this assumption.  However, it is possible that both spouses could die simultaneously in a common accident.  Santa Barbara, California attorney Mark Cornwall discusses the need to plan for simultaneous deaths.  “Spelling out your wishes in a revocable trust can prevent unintended distribution of property.”

Forbes.com has a concise pictorial essay called “In Pictures: 10 Estate Planning Moves To Make Now.”

The Dayton Daily News has a story entitled “Medical mistrust dissuades people from being organ donors.”  The most common reasons people decline to donate are:

• Desire that their body remain intact after death,
• Fear that medical personnel might withhold care from identified organ donors, and
• Religious objections.

Celebrity gossip website tmz.com says it accessed documents that show that Michael “Jackson's net worth was estimated at $1,360,839,979 on July 31, 2007,” but he ‘only' had liquid assets of $668,215 (.05% of his net worth).  TMZ claims Jackson's primary asset was his interest in the Sony-ATV Publishing Trust (including the Beatles music) valued at $1,150,000,000.

As an estate planning attorney, I am always amazed by the things people do or fail to do when it comes to death, property, inheritance and leaving property to their loved ones.  CNN.com has an interesting story on wills entitled “Dogs, Ferrari, strangers — weird stipulations.”  The story summarizes a number of bizarre wills.

Nevada recently adopted a new law that authorizes wills to be stored electronically.  The Nevada Secretary of State will create and maintain a secure on-line registry called the “Nevada Lockbox” where people can upload an electronic copy of their will and retrieve it when needed.  See 2009 Nevada Laws Ch. 253.

This is a great idea that all states should adopt.  A common problem after a death is that the family cannot find the deceased's will.  Sometimes the family does not know if the deceased had a will and sometimes the family knows the deceased signed a will, but they cannot find the original or even a copy of the will.  Another common problem is that a stepmother or stepfather refuses to open a probate or give a copy of the will to a stepchild.

A reader asks Wall St. Journal writer Kelly Green the following:

My wife and I are both over 65 and are doing some estate planning. Can I transfer funds from a traditional IRA to a trust without immediately being taxed? What would be the tax consequences of making the trust the beneficiary of my IRA?

The answer discusses an estate planning device I call an “IRA Inheritance Trust®.”  See my article on this subject called “How Your Family Can Become IRA Millionaires Using an IRA Inheritance Trust® that Protects the Funds from Ex-Spouses, Creditors & Bankruptcy Court.

Wall St. Journal:  ‘Intentionally Defective' Tool Can Protect Depressed Assets From Estate and Gift Taxes.  It may seem hard to come up with a financial product with a name as unattractive as an “intentionally defective grantor trust.” Yet these days, in the world of estate planning, those words denote one sexy vehicle.”  These types of trusts are also called “IDGTs.”