I came across a recent article in the Yahoo Finance Blog, Half of Americans With Kids Set to Die Without a Will. If you are a North Carolina resident, what happens to your estate if you don’t have a will (you die intestate, in legal terms)? Here’s a link to the NC law on Intestate Succession: N.C.G.S. Section 29-13 et. seq.
If you have a spouse and children, you might be surprised to learn that your spouse will not necessarily get your entire estate. This can can be especially problematic if you die owning real estate in your sole name and have minor children. Guardianships would have to be established and authority granted from the court before the property would be able to be sold. There are also a whole host of other potential problems that can be avoiding by having a will or living trust.
Bad things happen to the families of good people who die without a will. Don’t let this happen to you.
Mr & Mrs Smith: purveyors of holidays, and now corporate bonds
Being a saver remains a miserable business in Britain. Inflation may be a tad lower than it was, and deposit rates may be creeping up, but it’s still nigh on impossible for a higher-rate taxpayer to make a real return on his money if he keeps it in cash. Enter retail bonds.
Last year, some of the best-known and most trusted names in the market (John Lewis and Tesco) and some not-so-well-known names entered the bond market to sell debt directly to the public at pretty decent-sounding rates.
One bond we wrote about here was a four-year non-transferable one from currency exchange firm Caxton FX. It came with risks – getting your money back depended on Caxton staying solvent – but it offered an annual interest rate of 7.25%, which, at a time (last September) when a 40% taxpayer needed to get 7.5% to break even, was about as good as it got.
Nokia Corp. on Tuesday launched its first smartphones to run on the updated Symbian software with new icons, enhancements and a faster browser.
Nokia said the two models – the E6 and X7 – have longer battery life, better text input and new Ovi Maps applications with improved search and public transport routes.
The Nokia E6, with a standard QWERTY keypad and high resolution touch display, is aimed at corporate customers, while the Nokia X7 is an entertainment-focused handset with a 4-inch (10-centimeter) display made for games.
The world’s largest cellphone maker did not price the handsets.
Markets seemed unimpressed by the announcement, which comes as Nokia continues to struggle against stiff competition, especially from Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd.Nokia stock fell more than 3 percent to euro6.08 ($8.80) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
More than 200 million phones, with 150 million more expected on the market, use Symbian technology, seen by some developers as clumsy and dated. Read more…
The recent U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals case Estate of Kensinger v. URL Pharma, Inc. involved an lawsuit by a decedent’s estate against an ERISA plan administrator and the decedent’s ex-wife, who was beneficiary as beneficiary of her ex-husband’s 401(k) plan, seeking a declaration that the decedent’s estate was entitled to the funds in the 401(k) account because of a waiver signed by the ex-wife as part of a property settlement upon divorce. The court ruled that the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendants was: 1) affirmed in part, since the plan was required to distribute the funds to the ex-wife as the named beneficiary; but 2) reversed in part, because the estate could bring an action against the ex-wife to enforce her waiver and recover the disputed plan proceeds.
Even though the result was favorable to the estate, it was not without significant cost. It is crucial to remember to change beneficiary designation for retirement accounts and life insurance after a divorce. Click “Continue Reading” for the text of the ruling.
ESTATE OF William E.
As with all Budgets, the devil is in the detail. Often a headline-grabbing tax cut will be paid for by hiking taxes elsewhere. This Budget is no different. Let’s take a look at what’s going on.
The government wants to earn popularity points for increasing the personal income tax allowance. If you earn less than £100,000, you will be able to earn £8,105 before you have to pay income tax in 2012/13. This will rise to £9,205 in 2013/14.
But here’s the catch: to help pay for this, the threshold for basic rate income tax will be reduced by £630 to £34,370 in 2012/13 and by a further £2,125 in 2013/14 to £32,245. So you will start paying 40% tax if you earn more than £42,475 in 2012/13 and £41,450 in 2013/14 – meaning that more people will be dragged into the higher tax band.
The net effect of all this? Basic rate taxpayers will gain £170 in real terms (after inflation) in 2013/14.
Thought marketing plastic on campus was a thing of the past? Not so fast.
Credit card marketers have all but disappeared from college campuses, thanks to new rules from the Credit CARD Act of 2009 that sharply limit their ability to market credit cards to college students. However, two years after the CARD Act went into effect, banks are still on campus. Instead of pushing credit cards, they now lure new customers with college ID cards that double as debit cards.
“College costs are rising and new financial products are being pushed into the marketplace,” says Rich Williams, a higher education advocate for the consumer activist group PIRG. And a special hybrid product — campus debit cards, which aren’t covered by the CARD Act — are taking center stage.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) reported a 67 percent jump in first quarter earnings Wednesday on solid growth in investment banking fees and a drop in losses in its credit card portfolio.
The New York bank earned $5.6 billion, or $1.28 per share, compared with $3.3 billion, or 74 cents a share in the same period last year. The profits at JPMorgan, the first bank to report earnings, were way ahead of the $1.15 per share analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting.
Revenue fell to $25.2 billion from $27.7 billion in the same period last year.
The slump in real estate continued to weigh heavily on JPMorgan’s results. The bank increased its provision for mortgage-related losses by $1.1 billion.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, said in a statement that the bank’s mortgage losses were “extraordinarily high,” adding: “Unfortunately, these losses will continue for a while.”
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s profits included $2 billion from reducing its credit card loan reserves. Read more…