@trust812 wrote:
The estate is approximately $1.4 Million including a home and an Inherited IRA.
If an IRA or stock market account has a beneficiary, that passes directly to the beneficiary and is not part of the estate. Anything in the trust is not part of the estate.
An estate is a specific legal entity, not a generic term for "stuff left behind when a person dies." For example, my father's house was placed in a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust. He has an IRA and a stock market account, both with designated beneficiaries, and a checking account on which I am co-owner. To the best of my knowledge, none of these things will be part of his "estate" when he passes. His estate would be the cash in his other checking account, the furniture in the house, his collectibles, books, and his car, and probably his last pension check (which is paid in arrears at the end of the month). But not the house or investments I mentioned.
What assets or money is actually part of the estate?
