Preservation | Family Wealth Protection & Planning

On July 14, 2017, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens vetoed legislation that included a number of provisions related to estates and trusts.

Among the casualties of the veto were several provisions regarding estate and trust matters, the most significant being the Missouri Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Under this act, a user would be allowed to grant a fiduciary access to his or her electronic records or digital assets in a will, trust, power of attorney or other similar instrument. This issue is becoming more significant with the rise of online banking, trading and other financial services and will only increase in significance as more people abandon paper records for cloud services and other electronic storage. For now, Missouri is left without a uniform statute addressing these issues.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the Applicable Federal Rates (AFRs) for August 2017. AFRs are published monthly and represent the minimum interest rates that should be charged for family loans to avoid tax complications.

Here are the rates for August 2017:

Many people may think they have the option to leave their spouse nothing when they die, but almost every state has what is commonly called an “elective share” statute. These statutes work to protect a surviving spouse from being cut out of a deceased spouse’s estate plan, permitting the disinherited spouse to elect to take a portion of the estate. This is especially helpful, for example, in a situation in which someone has decided to leave nothing to his or her spouse and instead leave everything to another romantic partner.