Charles D Roulet

Are you thinking of staring a small business? Roulet Law Firm can help guide you through ways to incorporate so you can save on taxes and/or have a liability shield. We can look at your business and advise if you should go with an LLC, S-Corporation, or other entity.

If someone dies without a written estate plan, a judge determines who inherits their assets. If minor children are included as heirs, they typically would receive 100% oftheir assets outright and unprotected at the age of 18. With a written estate plan, you can specify exactly who your heirs are and have the option to stagger the amounts they receive. Creating a written estate plan is especially important for those with blended families and minor children.

Once you have decided to get a written estate plan in place, you may be wondering: Which is better, a will or a trust? It really depends on your priorities. Both will allow you to determine who would raise your kids if something ever happened to you, who would get your assets, and who would manage your estate. But the important difference is that with a will your estate would go through the probate process and be public, and with a trust your estate would avoid the probate process and be private.

You may be wondering what would happen if you don't have a will or a trust in place. In that case, if something ever happened to you, a judge would decide who would manage your estate. A court would determine who gets your assets, who would take care of your children if they are minors, and your children would get their money outright and unprotected at age 18.

Watch the video above to learn more about how to protect your assets and shield them from potential creditors. These options include: maintaining sufficient insurance, revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, and optimal business structure.

A living will is also known as a Health Care Directive in Minnesota. It is important because it gives the person of your choice the authority to make health care decisions on your behalf if you ever become unable to. It also leaves instructions so that choices will be consistent with your wishes.

Business owners often hear about certain benefits of incorporating in "incorporation-friendly" states like Delaware, Alaska, or Nevada and wonder if incorporating in one of these states would be right for them. Most of the clients I see would not benefit under this arrangement, because they are headquartered in Minnesota and most of their business is conducted in the Minnesota. Typically, they would still have to follow Minnesota law, unless they leaned heavily on accountants and lawyers to try to set up a really complicated arrangement. If they were to incorporate in Delaware, the registration, upkeep, accounting and legal fees would generally offset any potential advantages. We find that incorporating in another state is just not a cost-effective option for many small businesses who do most of their business in Minnesota. For business who will be operating in multiple states, the option to incorporate in a "business-friendly" state like Delaware, Alaska, or Nevada becomes a more viable option. If you have questions about whether incorporating in a "business-friendly" state is right for you, please contact our office.

Common Mistakes Parents Make Naming Guardians for Their Kids

Roulet Law Firm is available to help parents create plans to help take care of a special needs child. With a special needs child, it is important to: 1. Leave sufficient assets for your special needs child, either through savings or life insurance, and 2. Put the assets into a supplemental needs trust. A supplemental needs trust is a specific kind of trust that supplements, but does not replace, government benefits. If you do not put the assets into a supplemental needs trust, the inheritance would cause your child to lose their government benefits, and they would have to burn through the inherited assets and then have to go back and reapply for government benefits.

Many estate in Minnesota exceed $1,000,000. Planning to reduce estate taxes is important to maximize the assets you are able to pass on. Parents of minor children who are leaving sufficient assets for their children most likely will have a taxable estate, either because of savings or because of life insurance proceeds. Advanced estate planning techniques can shelter some of your assets from the estate tax.

Roulet Law Firm is available to advise clients through the Twin Cities and Minnesota on advanced estate planning and asset protection techniques like irrevocable trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATS), grantor retained unity trusts (GRUTS), and charitable remainder trusts. These techniques help reduce federal and Minnesota estate taxes (also called death taxes).

Probate is a term that is commonly referred to in estate planning. A probate court handles estates where there is a will or where there is no estate plan in place at all (neither a will nor a trust). A probate court determines the validity of a will and appoints the personal representative who will be handline the estate. A probate court will also decide who gets the assets of the estate if there is no plan in place.

If you have minor children, there are certain steps you should take to make sure they would be taken care of if something happened to me they would be taken care of. Roulet Law Firm recommends the following measures to protect minor children in Minnesota: 1. Name Short Term Guardians 2. Name Long Term Guardians 3. Have a Written Estate Plan in Place

Putting your kids on title can bring disaster. If your kids get divorced their soon to be ex-spouse can sue for their portion of the asset. It can also cause you or your kids to lose government benefits. If you want to avoid probate, my recommendation is to set up a trust and not put your kids on title.

At some law firms, you need to contact an attorney if you want to put something into your trust or take something out of it. At Roulet Law Firm, we can help put a will or trust in place that will protect what matters most to you.

Wills and trusts offer many advantages over no plan at all: They allow YOU to decide who gets your assets and who will manage the funds of any of your minor children until they are eligible to manage it themselves. One disadvantage of a will is that typically any minor children would receive their full inheritance outright and unprotected at age 18. With a trust, you can decide to spread the payments out as you see best. A will triggers probate while a properly funded trust avoids probate. If you have any questions about estate planning or would like to schedule a free consultation, feel free to contact our Maple Grove, MN office at (763) 420-5087.

Clients often wonder, if I create a revocable trust, can it be changed? Absolutely!

Is joint ownership a way around the probate process?

Some people may wonder: "If I set up a revocable living trust, would I lose control of the assets?" Rest assured that you maintain complete control of the assets of a revocable living trust.

If you are here that probably means you have some questions about what type of business to use for real estate investing here in Minnesota, whether that is buying and flipping houses, developing land or for buying and renting homes, townhouses, condos or apartment buildings. First, you need to know that there are two reasons for starting a business: One is a liability shield; Two is taxes. By properly setting up and maintaining a company, whether that is a C corporation, S corporation or a limited liability company, an LLC, you can protect your personal assets from creditors of your business. A corporation and an LLC, while there are some differences in how their liability shields work, will protect your assets if set up and maintained properly. The differences, and which one you choose, usually come down to the tax differences between them and which one will give you the greatest tax benefits. Having said that, for any type of real estate investment, a limited liability company, LLC, is usually gives you the best tax benefits.

Why Minnesota Families Cannot Count on Portability to Protect Their Estate from Death Taxes If you are here, that means you probably have some questions on portability and whether or not it applies to your estate. Many families are under the mistaken belief that they no longer need to do estate tax planning because federal portability and the higher federal estate tax exemption takes care of that for them. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Portability only applies to the federal estate tax. It does nothing to protect you or your family from MN death taxes. Not only does federal portability offer no protection for your estate, the much reported federal exemption has give many a false sense of security. Mn has a separate estate tax that is in addition to the federal estate tax and it has a lower estate tax threshold -- estates as small as $1 million dollars are subject to the tax. Also, portability has numerous other shortcomings. For example, it does nothing to protect a surviving spouse or your children from creditor’s claims, lawsuits, and divorce. For more information on the hidden dangers of portability, check out our video “ The Hidden Dangers of Portability: Why Relying on Federal Portability for Your Minnesota Estate Planning May Cost You and Your Family Dearly�?

Why Relying on Federal Portability for Your Minnesota Estate Tax Planning May Cost You and Your Family Dearly Relying on federal portability for your Minnesota estate planning may cost you and your family dearly. That is because portability is not a replacement for traditional trust planning. Many people have heard or read that with the higher federal estate tax exemption and the extension of portability, that they no longer need to do traditional trust planning. However, portability has a number of costly shortcomings. First, portability does not provide for creditor protection for a surviving spouse in the way traditional trust planning can. A properly drafted trust can protect assets for the surviving spouse from creditors, lawsuits, Medicaid spenddown requirements and even from a divorce settlement if a surviving spouse remarries. Second, it does not allow a surviving spouse and children to lock in appreciation on estate assets from estate tax at a survivor’s passing. It does not provide for control and protection for blended families. If you and/or your spouse has a child or children from a prior relationship, you need to have a properly drafted trust to ensure your estate and your children are protected in the way you want. Only a properly drafted trust can specify how money should be managed for minor children, who should manage it for them, when they should get it and any restrictions you want to place on it. It does not protect your children’s inheritance from creditors, lawsuits and divorce. It does not provide for protection in the event the law is changed and portability is no longer permitted. If there is one thing we can count on from the federal government when it comes to the laws surrounding estate taxes and estate tax planning – they are always changing. With the stroke of a pen, federal portability could vanish. Portability does not apply to the generation-skipping tax, so in order to fully leverage the generation-skipping tax exemptions of both spouses for generation-skipping trust planning, a trust must still be created.