You Just Inherited a Million Dollars

Someone you loved has died and left you more money than you’ve ever had. The first year decides how much of it you keep.

You Just Inherited a Million Dollars is a plain-English guide for a California heir of about $1 million and up, and for the person they call first. It’s written by a California attorney whose practice emphasizes estate planning, trust administration and probate. It follows the order the decisions come in: the first weeks, the way each piece of money arrives, the taxes, the house, and the first year.

What’s inside:

• What not to rush. Most decisions can wait months. The few that can’t, including the nine-month clock on turning down an inheritance.
• How the money arrives. What a trustee owes you, how a probate runs, how life insurance and payable-on-death accounts are claimed, and what to ask for at each step.
• Inherited retirement accounts. The 10-year rule, who gets more time, what a surviving spouse can do, and why you ask for a transfer instead of a check.
• Income tax basics. Why most of an inheritance isn’t income, how the step-up in basis works, and which inheritances do come with a tax bill.
• Inherited California real estate. When a child can keep a parent’s property tax base, and how to decide whether to keep, rent or sell the house.
• Marriage. Why an inheritance starts out as separate property, how it gets mixed, and how to keep it yours.
• Creditors and requests. What your creditors can reach, how to answer family requests, and how to help a relative on SSI or Medi-Cal without costing them their benefits.
• Your own estate plan. What to update now that you’re the one with something to leave.

Every dollar example is labeled as an illustration and shows its arithmetic. Every rule is tied to its source in the Probate Code, the Family Code, the Revenue and Taxation Code or federal tax law. The back of the book has printable checklists, worksheets, a glossary and a page of this year’s figures.

This book is general information about California law. It isn’t legal, tax or investment advice.

Read the free guide first

• Seven inheritance tax myths
• What to do with an inherited house
• Inherited IRAs and the 10-year rule

More books: when you inherit

• What to Expect When You’re InheritingComing soon
• The Prop 19 TrapComing soon
• The Inherited IRA ClockComing soon