Paley Rothman shares this library of resources with clients and friends of the firm to help them stay ahead of legal and business developments and trends. Here, you will find helpful tips and tools written by our attorneys. The information in the blogs and articles is not a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied on as such. Should you have any questions or want legal advice, please contact the attorney who wrote the blog or article.
The Maryland Code exempts from inheritance tax all property received by the spouse of a deceased Maryland resident. It also exempts property that passes from a decedent to or for the use of, among others, the decedent’s children, grandchildren, the spouse of a child of the decedent, the spouse of a lineal descendant of a child of the decedent and the brother or sister of the decedent.
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In the world of commercial finance, many loans are secured by real estate; the borrower gives the lender a lien on the borrower’s real estate to secure payment of the loan. In Maryland, the downside to granting this type of lien is the large amount of taxes collected by the clerk of court when the lien is recorded. On a loan of $1 million, for example, the taxes collected could easily exceed $10,000. Loans running in the many millions of dollars are not uncommon and they can cost the borrower hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes collected when the lien is recorded.
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In December of 2010, Congress and President Obama came to a compromise on a series of tax law changes affecting income, estate, gift and generation skipping taxes. (For a summary of the more salient changes, see the “Estate & Gift Tax Laws Provide Benefits For Now” blog post by Jeff Kolender, chair of the firm’s Estate Planning and Estate & Trust Administration practice groups.) These modifications generally had the effect of further extending, and in several important aspects, substantially expanding estate tax planning opportunities for many taxpayers. They adopted the now common and dreaded “sunset” provisions of recent tax law, which means that, without further legislative action, these favorable changes will by and large expire and be lost, in this case, at the end of 2012.
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Recordation and transfer taxes in Maryland are among the highest in the region, and can be prohibitively expensive to someone wanting to transfer real property - during life or at death, outright or in trust - as part of his or her estate planning. A new state law (effective July 1, 2011) that expands existing recordation and transfer tax exemptions should lower the transactional costs for many types of estate planning conveyances. It will also close a loophole that has recently been used by one Maryland county (and is under consideration by other counties in the state) to impose recordation and transfer taxes on certain transfers of real property from an estate.
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Suppose you are considering filing for divorce. Perhaps you have a custody, visitation or child support issue that needs to be resolved. Maybe you want a prenuptial agreement or a post-nuptial agreement prepared. Or let’s say you have some other family-related issue that requires the knowledge and experience of a good family law attorney. Where do you even begin?
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