Introduction

• Author: Margaret A. Munro, Kathryn A. Murphy
• Profession: Has more than 30 years' experience in trusts, estates, family tax, and small businesses/Attorney with more than 20 years' experience administering estates and trusts and preparing estate and gift tax returns
• Pages: 1-6

Introduction 1

Introduction

This country is aging. Fewer babies are being born, and people are living

longer and longer. They’re also managing to accumulate more and more

wealth. Wealth is relative; two generations ago, a middle-income family

owned a house and maybe a car and perhaps even had a little money in the bank.

Today, that scenario has become much more complicated. Many who would never

consider themselves wealthy now own more than one home and have investments

in the stock market, retirement accounts that continue on after death, and debt up

to their eyeballs.

With this increased complexity in nancial aairs comes a parallel complexity in

transferring all these accumulated assets to the next generation(s), either at death

or before. In the past, heavy-duty trusts were only for the very wealthy; today,

they’ve become part of the legal landscape for ordinary Americans. And because

ours is a do-it-yourself society in so many aspects, that I-can-do-it-myself

attitude has carried over into trust and estate administration. Why, many people

ask, should they pay someone else to do work that they themselves can perform

just as well for a fraction of the cost?

And that’s why we wrote the second edition of this book. Between the two of us,

we have more than 60 years of estate and trust administration experience. In that

time, we’ve come across some unusual situations in our careers and devised ways

to avoid standard pitfalls that await the unwary. We wrote this book to share with

you some of this accumulated wisdom— and to help you avoid the mistakes that

we’ve made (or narrowly avoided).

About This Book

Estate & Trust Administration For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is the practical reference

forthose who nd themselves appointed as executor, administrator, or personal

representative of an estate, or as trustee of a trust. In these pages, you can nd

advice on what to do— and what to avoid— as you acquire, manage, and dispose

of assets that belong to the estate or trust you’re administering.