Estate Planning for Brokerage Accounts
- Trusts are written by attorneys for estate planning.Legal Law Justice image by Stacey Alexander from Fotolia.com
Accounts held in a trust name live on with the trust once the account owner passes away. Although account control changes hands to the contingent trustee, the account does not change. - Joint with rights of survivorship allows a surviving spouse to control the account.Old couple image by cegli from Fotolia.com
Accounts jointly titled with survivorship rights allow one owner to claim all assets of an account when the other owner passes away. - Each owner of this type of account owns a portion of the assets. Once a single owner passes away, only one-half is claimed by the estate and the other is still held by the joint owner of the account.
- Named beneficiaries don't have account control while the owner is alive.The grandfather learns the granddaughter to do a kebab image by Andris Daugovich from Fotolia.com
Transfer on death registration, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, allows accounts to have a beneficiary attached. This passes the account to named heirs or a named estate once the owner passes away.
