A reader challenged me to share advice about how to protect loved ones from what he called “legal terrorism”.

He said he endured a horrible legal fight over his father’s estate and pointed at probate as the evil to be avoided.

He was a little misguided. Probate isn’t the problem. The problem is having an estate to fight over. There can be no fight over an empty estate.

Strategies I have discussed so far in this series included:

1. Depleting your estate by spending all your money before you die.

2. Giving your wealth to intended beneficiaries while you’re alive.

3. Passing wealth through joint tenancy ownership (a trilogy of columns). 4. Passing wealth through a legal mechanism called a trust.

The last strategy I’ll write about is using investment tools that pass wealth directly to named beneficiaries without passing through your estate, strategies such as tax registered accounts and life insurance products.

Tax........

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