Adamsky Law Offices Blog

The United States Congress has voted to increase the FDIC insurance on bank accounts to $250,000 per account/per holder. (It was part of the recent big ecomonic stability bill). This increase is only temporary - until the end of 2009. (It may later be made permanent.) FDIC insurance is per depositor, so a married couple (or anyone else) with a joint account gets double the amount of protection. This increase in protection also works for accounts owned by a Trust and certain accounts that have beneficiaries such as "ITF" or "Totten Trust" accounts. (An ITF [in trust for] or Totten Trust account is not really held in Trust - it is an account with a lifetime owner and one or more named beneficiaries to take ownership upon the death of the lifetime owner.) For a good explanation of the FDIC trust rules, check out the blog of my colleague Jan Myskowski of Wiggin and Nourie in Manchester, New Hampshire: http://wiggin-nourie.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-fdic-rules-regard

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the community spouse resource allowances (CSRA) and the maximum monthly maintenance needs allowance for 2009. The new minimum CSRA is $21,912 and the new maximum is $109,560. The new maximum monthly maintenance needs allowance is $2,739. The minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance remains $1,750 until July 1, 2009. The new figures are effective January 1, 2009, and reflect an increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 4.9 percent from September 2007 to September 2008.

We invite you to register and attend the first-ever National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys public Webcast. "Aging in America: How to Plan for it" is a one-hour videotaped news program broadcast "live" via the Internet. Streamed at NAELA.org on October 30 at 1:00 pm ET, the free Webcast will be moderated by AARP's Wil Stoner and include NAELA panelists Bernie Krooks and Ron Fatoullah. Registration is available at NAELA.org.

The annual gift tax exclusion will increase from $12,000 to $13,000 effective January 1, 2009, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) just announced. The gift tax exclusion is the amount the IRS allows a taxpayer to gift to another individual without reporting the gift. This is not a limit on giving, it is a tax filing threshold . You are always free to give more than the threshold , but then you must file a gift-tax return. The life-time exclusion amount of $1 million means that most people won't ever have to pay gift tax - only those making total lifetime gifts above that amount will owe any tax. The increase in the yearly exclusion amount means that more can be given away for estate tax planning purposes in any one year. For example, a married couple with four children will be able to give away up to $104,000 in 2009 with no gift tax implications. You don't have to give to just children though, you can give to anyone that you would want to benefit, including relatives and friend