News & Updates for Executors and Trustees
Good News for California Executors
Effective January 1, 2012, more executors in California can take advantage of streamlined "small estate" procedures to transfer property to inheritors. These procedures are easier, faster, and cheaper than regular probate court proceedings. The new dollar limit to qualify as a small estate, as of 2012, is $150,000. So if the total value of all the property that would otherwise need to go through probate court proceedings doesn't exceed $150,000, the probate shortcuts for small estates are available.
California has also raised the limit on real estate that can be transferred without probate, to $50,000. Although far below the value of the typical California house, time shares or unimproved lots may still qualify. All the inheritors have to do, to transfer title into their names, is file an affidavit (sworn statement) in superior court.
States Keep Tinkering With Their Estate Taxes
The federal estate tax is often in the news, but most executors don't need to concern themselves with it--only the wealthiest esates pay that tax. More estates are affected by the separate estate taxes collected by many states. And those taxes continue to change. Here are the latest changes:
- Connecticut lowered its estate tax exemption from $3.5 million to $2 million. The law was signed in May of 2011, but it made the change retroactive to deaths as of January 1, 2011. The state is being sued by the estate of a wealthy land developer who died in April of 2011.
- Illinois (like the federal government) didn't impose its own estate tax for deaths in 2010, but the tax came back for deaths as of January 1, 2011. The exemption amount is $2 million.
- North Carolina's tax also vanished for 2010 deaths but reappeared as of January 1, 2011, with an exemption amount of $5 million for deaths in 2011 and $5.12 million in 2012.
- Rhode Island now indexes its estate tax exemption amount for inflation; the figure for 2011 deaths is $859,350.
- Vermont increased its estate tax exempt amount to $2,750,000 effective January 1, 2011.
