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Is part time employment included in an Idaho child support calculation?
The Idaho child support guidelines state that additional part time employment is excluded from income for child support calculations if the person can show: "(1) the excess employment is voluntary and not a condition of employment, and (2) the excess employment is in the nature of additional, part-time employment or is employment compensable as overtime pay by the hour or fractions of the hour, and (3) the party's compensation structure has not been changed for the purpose of affecting a support or maintenance obligation, and (4) the party is otherwise paid for full-time employment at least 48 weeks per year, and (5) child support payments are calculated based upon current income". (See Idaho Child Support Guidelines.) If the person can prove the above information, his/her additional part time employment would be excluded as income under the Idaho Child Support Guidelines.
How Your Taxes Will Change in 2013 – In A Nut Shell
The bill approved in Congress to avert the fiscal cliff would bring the first major tax increase on high earners in 20 years. Payroll Taxes Increase to 6.2% from 4.2% (almost a 50% increase) Taxpayers Making $200,000 (Single), $250,000 (Couples) Would See Payroll (Medicare) Taxes Increase an Additional 0.9% on Top of the 6.2% Taxpayers Making $400,000 (Single), $450,000 (Couples) Would See Top Marginal Income Tax Rates Increase to 39.6% from 35% Taxpayers Making $400,000 (Single), $450,000 (Couples) Would See Long Term Capital Gains Rate Increase to 20% from 15% Taxpayers Making $200,000 (Single), $250,000 (Couples) Would See an Investment Surtax of 3.8% on Interest, Dividends, Capital Gains and the Like on Sources Above the Limits Estate Tax Exemption Amount Remains at $5.125 Million (adjusted from inflation), But Rate Increases to 40% from 35% Taxpayers Making $250,000 (Single), $300,000 (Couples) will Face Exemptions and Deductions Phaseouts
Not The End But A New Beginning
In the next two months, those words will ring out in high school graduation ceremonies all across the country. And if you have a high school senior in your home, then chances are that things are about to change dramatically, both for you and your high school senior. There are a few things that you need to take care of before sending your senior off to college. In essence, you need to really prepare your student for college. While your college-bound student should be emotional and mentally prepared for the challenge of higher education, there is no way to know how they are going to adapt to a new environment, especially if your student is moving far away for school. Set Them Up for Success The most important thing you can do is to be involved in the process of enrolling. That means going to orientation with your son or daughter. It means figuring out which courses are required in the first year, and it means helping your student get registered. You don’t have to do it for them, but be there to support the process and help problem-solve. It’s also smart to take a self-guided campus tour. Have your son or ...
QTIP Trusts
A QTIP trust, or Qualified Terminable Interest Property trust, is a special type of A/B trust. Have I lost you yet? Not to worry… keep reading! Let’s start at the beginning. An A/B trust is a marital trust system comprised of two trusts, an A trust and a B trust. The A trust is typically referred to as the marital trust, though sometimes it is a QTIP trust (just keep that in mind for now). The B trust is the trust that benefits the broader family. Here’s how it works 1. A married couple puts the appropriate language to create A/B trusts in their last wills or revocable living trusts. 2. Assets are divided so that they are owned in relatively even proportions between the spouses. The entire A/B plan falls apart if assets are owned jointly, since then the assets pass directly to surviving spouses without the tax benefits of the A/B system. 3. When one spouse dies, the entire tax-free portion of his or her estate is transferred to the B trust. This trust can be for the benefit of the surviving spouse, children, grandchildren, and just about ...
More About Your Estate Plan
The revocable living trust is the basic building block of most estate plans. It’s the tool that allows your estate to avoid the expense, time consumption, and uncertainty of probate court, and it is the tool that can hold just about any of your assets. While revocable living trusts are ubiquitous in the world of estate planning, it seems that many people are still confused about them, so we are going to clear up a few commonly asked questions. What does revocable mean? It means that you can “undo” the trust at any time. In almost all cases, it also means that you can amend or change the terms of the trust. Revocable trusts are the ultimate in terms of flexibility, so don’t worry if circumstances change down the road and you want to make adjustments to your plan. You can make any changes you want (with legal guidance, of course). It’s a trust, so who controls it? You do! Revocable living trusts are also known as grantor trusts. A trust is a grantor trust when the trust creator (“grantor”) is also the trust beneficiary. In the case of ...
Election Year Antics
Welcome to politics in 2012! Did you sign up for what we’re getting in America? In many ways, nobody is happy with the landscape. Most of us—Independents, Democrats, and Republicans alike—are unhappy (or even disgusted) with politics in general. It’s at the point of being most disgruntled, however, that we need to pay the most attention. It’s the point at which real transformation can occur. Pushing through the urge to disengage and through the resistance to be involved is difficult, but if we don’t all take responsibility for it, then we’ll end up in a place that we don’t want to be in. Think about it like this: Who is taking responsibility for our current situation? The answer is that we should all be taking responsibility, whether we played our role actively are passively. More Reasons To Be Involved Than Ever Before Even if the typical issues like taxes, the economy, social matters, job creation, globalization, and fiscal policy aren’t enough to motivate you to be involved, there is one issue that will probably get you off the couch this election season: YOUR MONEY! On December 31st of ...
Assets Without Physical Form
There’s been a lot written about estate planning in recent years. That’s partially because federal laws on the taxation of estates have changed a lot in the past few years, and they will be up for discussion by Congress again before the end of 2012. Anything being discussed by Congress gets a considerable amount of attention from the media and, in the case of estate tax issues, tax and estate attorneys as well. Most of the discussion about estates is focused directly on physical assets and how they should be passed to family members and other loved ones. Physical assets include things like houses, cars, cash, stocks, bonds, and real estate. However, in a world of increasing technological advancements, assets without physical form are becoming more and more abundant and more and more valuable. Some Examples of Assets without Physical Form Do you own a domain name . . . you know, a web address? How about a Facebook account? What about an easily recognizable email address or a Twitter handle? Are any of those things valuable and worth passing on to your loved ones? If so, have you made arrangements to have ownership ...
Professional Guidance Through a Complex Process
There is a widespread misconception that estate planning is simply a method of directing one’s assets to designated beneficiaries in the event of death. That’s simply too narrow of a view. Estate planning is necessary—crucial in fact--in the event that you become incapacitated or otherwise need a loved one to manage your finances. This can happen, for example, if you are about to undergo surgery with a prolonged recovery period. In addition, proper estate planning may be necessary in order to reduce an estate tax burden. Protecting your property is complex. The amount of money and other assets you have will determine the type of planning best suited to your needs, so the first step of creating any estate plan is taking a thorough inventory. Depending on your needs, the management of your wealth can involve the creation of revocable living trusts, wills, lifetime gifts, and life estates. The assets that need to be identified and evaluated when creating your estate planning strategy include investments, real property, insurance policies, and personal effects. The bottom line is that you want to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your ...
Three Reasons for Having a Living Trust
There are a multitude of reasons to have a living trust. We can’t begin to cover them all, but we will touch on three reasons very briefly here. Reason #1: Protecting Property for Certain Beneficiaries When most of us think about estate planning, we think about passing our property to our family and other loved ones after we die. However, sometimes our intended beneficiaries are unable to handle an inheritance. Minor children are the most common example of this. Minor children aren’t even allowed to own property in many states. In most states, a guardian is appointed to hold the property on behalf of inheriting children until they are legally old enough to own property. Even then, if you speak to parents of an 18 year old, they might cringe at the idea of their teenager receiving any large sum of money. An 18 year old with outright legal ownership of money might very well quit school, buy a sports car, and head to Hawaii. Having a living trust alleviates this problem. Reason #2: Managing Property upon Incapacity. If you can believe it, ...
Estate Planning and Business Succession
Most people hear the words “Estate Planning” and automatically think about wills, trusts, tax issues, and probate. The reality is that estate planning is about much more than just figuring out how to pass on your hard-earned assets. We’ve written a lot about the ways that estate planning benefits families. Today we’re going to talk about the broad principles of estate planning and focus on applying them to one particular segment of the population, business owners. The concepts are relevant to all estate planning, however, so keep reading even if you’re not a business owner right now. What is a Business? In a very broad sense, a business is something that delivers value to customers in exchange for enough revenue to make operations worthwhile. People and businesses are very similar in that both spend their time acquiring assets. Business entities are even more similar to people. A business entity has its own legal existence. That just means that business entities can enter contracts, buy and sell goods, sue and be sued, and do just about anything else that a person can do.
Idaho legal news by Snake River Law
- Is part time employment included in an Idaho child support calculation? March 18, 2013The Idaho child support guidelines state that additional part time employment is excluded from income for child support calculations if the person can show: “(1) the excess employment is voluntary and not a condition of employment, and (2) the excess employment is in the nature of additional, part-time employment or is employment compensable as overtime [... […]admin
- How Your Taxes Will Change in 2013 – In A Nut Shell January 3, 2013The bill approved in Congress to avert the fiscal cliff would bring the first major tax increase on high earners in 20 years. Payroll Taxes Increase to 6.2% from 4.2% (almost a 50% increase) Taxpayers Making $200,000 (Single), $250,000 (Couples) Would See Payroll (Medicare) Taxes Increase an Additional 0.9% on Top of the 6.2% Taxpayers […]admin
- Not The End But A New Beginning May 4, 2012In the next two months, those words will ring out in high school graduation ceremonies all across the country. And if you have a high school senior in your home, then chances are that things are about to change dramatically, both for you and your high school senior. There are a few things that you […]admin
- QTIP Trusts April 20, 2012A QTIP trust, or Qualified Terminable Interest Property trust, is a special type of A/B trust. Have I lost you yet? Not to worry… keep reading! Let’s start at the beginning. An A/B trust is a marital trust system comprised of two trusts, an A trust and a B trust. The A trust is typically […]admin
- More About Your Estate Plan April 13, 2012The revocable living trust is the basic building block of most estate plans. It’s the tool that allows your estate to avoid the expense, time consumption, and uncertainty of probate court, and it is the tool that can hold just about any of your assets. While revocable living trusts are ubiquitous in the world of […]admin
- Election Year Antics February 8, 2012Welcome to politics in 2012! Did you sign up for what we’re getting in America? In many ways, nobody is happy with the landscape. Most of us—Independents, Democrats, and Republicans alike—are unhappy (or even disgusted) with politics in general. It’s at the point of being most disgruntled, however, that we need to pay the most […]admin
- Assets Without Physical Form November 8, 2011There’s been a lot written about estate planning in recent years. That’s partially because federal laws on the taxation of estates have changed a lot in the past few years, and they will be up for discussion by Congress again before the end of 2012. Anything being discussed by Congress gets a considerable amount of […]admin
- Professional Guidance Through a Complex Process October 18, 2011There is a widespread misconception that estate planning is simply a method of directing one’s assets to designated beneficiaries in the event of death. That’s simply too narrow of a view. Estate planning is necessary—crucial in fact–in the event that you become incapacitated or otherwise need a loved one to manage your finances. This can […]admin
- Three Reasons for Having a Living Trust October 5, 2011There are a multitude of reasons to have a living trust. We can’t begin to cover them all, but we will touch on three reasons very briefly here. Reason #1: Protecting Property for Certain Beneficiaries When most of us think about estate planning, we think about passing our property to our family and […]admin
- Estate Planning and Business Succession September 22, 2011Most people hear the words “Estate Planning” and automatically think about wills, trusts, tax issues, and probate. The reality is that estate planning is about much more than just figuring out how to pass on your hard-earned assets. We’ve written a lot about the ways that estate planning benefits families. Today we’re going to talk […]admin
