The Washington legislature adopted a couple of laws recently that we thought you’d find interesting:

Domestic Partnerships.  Starting this July 22^nd, you or your parents may be able to take advantage of new legislation that allows couples living together to have some of the legal benefits of married couples such as visiting at health care facilities, getting access to health care information and giving consent, getting public employee health care benefits, and inheriting if there is no will.  At least one of the persons must be 62 or older, or both must be of the same sex, and the couple must register with the State as a “domestic partnership.”  The legislation was enacted in part to allow a couple living together to have some of the same benefits as married couples without jeopardizing their right to continue to receive the Social Security benefits of a deceased spouse.

Custodial accounts.  It used to be that if one established a gifts-to-minors (“UGMA” or “UTMA”) account for a child, one took the risk of the account doing very well, the money not being fully used for education, and the child getting a big lump of cash at age 18 or 21.  The new law, effective this July 1^st, allows us to elect, upon establishing such an account, to defer the ultimate distribution until the beneficiary is 25.  There’s one hitch in that the election makes the contribution ineligible for the annual (Federal) gift tax exclusion, so those parents or grandparents with taxable estates (roughly speaking, those with an estate of $2 million or more) should be careful in making such an election. 

Please feel free to call us with questions on any aspect of your estate planning.  Members of our Trusts & Estates Group include Julie Dickens, Alan Macpherson, Eileen Peterson, Sandy Rovai and Kyle Karinen.