Natalie Choate’s Seminar Topics

What to do with an IRA that has a shady past. 1 hour

The world of IRA mistakes is like the children’s game “Chutes and Ladders.” Your client falls down the “chute” by making an IRA mistake. What IRS horrors await him? Before the IRS destroys your client’s retirement security, you need to find a “ladder” to bring the client’s IRA back up to the sunny skies of retirement heaven!

• The Problems: Sooner or later you will have a client with a missed minimum distribution, excess contribution, bungled Roth conversion, rollover snafu, or other IRA misstep.
• The Punishments: Know whether your client faces a 6%, 10%, or 50% penalty, a deemed distribution, or complete disqualification of his IRA.
• The Remedies: Learn when and how to use corrective distribution, absorption, recharacterization, hardship waiver of a deadline or a penalty, or a rollover to solve your client’s problem.

Everything you need to know about Roth retirement plans, to help your clients decide on, implement, or undo a Roth conversion. 1 hour

Roth IRAs, offering tax-free distributions and no required distributions during the participant’s life, are now available to high-income clients. To help you advise your clients regarding this significant planning opportunity, Natalie Choate explains the rules and shares expert tips about:

• How to create a Roth IRA
• Designated Roth accounts (“Roth 401(k)s”)
• How the minimum distribution rules apply to Roth IRAs
• How to get a “free” (or cheap) Roth conversion
• Beneficiary Roth conversions
• Estate planning with Roth IRAs
• Which clients should (and should not) “go Roth”
• How to undo a Roth conversion
• Roth time bombs to avoid

The special tax rules that apply when a life insurance or annuity contract is held inside a retirement plan. 1 hour

Does your client own (or is he/she considering purchasing) an insurance policy or annuity inside a retirement plan? If so, then you need to know the special rules that apply to plan-owned products, including:

• Tax treatment of plan-owned life insurance during employment
• Tax treatment of plan-owned life insurance at employee's death
• How to "roll out" an insurance policy at retirement
• The three different valuation rules for plan-owned annuities
• Minimum distributions and "annuitized" IRAs
• Scams and abuses to avoid
• Which products can (and cannot) be held in a plan or IRA
• Positive planning uses for life insurance and annuities in connection with retirement benefits

Help your clients make tax-smart decisions regarding their retirement plan distributions

Help your clients make tax-smart decisions regarding their retirement plan distributions. Learn how to grab the special tax deals and avoid the penalties including:

• Three decisions at retirement (taking "LSD," life insurance "roll out," and defined benefit options)
• Grandfather rules: Does your client have a pre-1987 403(b) balance or a TEFRA 242(b) election?
• Ten things you must consider when a client is rolling money from one plan to another
• What to do the year the client turns 70½ -- and what to do the year before!
• The best way to take required and non-required distributions
• Reasons to take out money BEFORE you have to
• The Roth IRA conversion decision

Alternative title or subtitle: The Estate Planner's Guide to "stretch" IRAs. 1 hour

The minimum distribution rules for retirement benefits are key to minimizing income taxes for your clients and their beneficiaries. Learn how your client's benefits can qualify for the "stretch" life expectancy payout, and how to avoid missed deferral opportunities and costly penalties. Natalie explains:

• How to compute required distributions, during participant's life and after death
• When distributions must start
• Why the lifetime rules are a good deal for retirees (and their estate planners)
• The post-death options for spouse, children, trust, or estate named as beneficiary
• Effect of the one-year suspension of required distributions in 2009

Practical Ideas for Real Life Situations. 1 hour*

Learn how to integrate retirement benefits into the typical estate plan. What approaches are available for the client whose major asset is an IRA or other retirement plan, and who wants to:

• Use both spouses' estate tax exemptions (the "credit shelter trust" problem)
• Reduce estate taxes while deferring income taxes
• Leave benefits to in trust for spouse (the "QTIP trust" problem)
• Leave benefits to multiple children with each using his/her own life expectancy
• Leave benefits to minor children

This presentation answers these questions, explaining the pros, cons and pitfalls of various approaches, including the conservative, the practical and the "cutting edge."

The 3 Whys, 8 Hows, 7 Whiches, and 9 Whens. 1 hour

Help your charitably-inclined clients save money while doing good. Learn:

• Three reasons to fund charitable gifts with retirement benefits
• Eight ways to leave retirement benefits to charity
• The seven types of charitable entities (such as public charity, private foundation, charitable lead or remainder trust); which ones are (and are not) suitable as beneficiaries
• Four situations in which charitable giving helps solve benefit-planning problems
• Five scenarios for lifetime giving with benefits

How to Advise Executors and Beneficiaries: Estate taxes, Disclaimers, Rollovers, and Cleanup Strategies. 1 hour*

As more retirement plan owners die leaving significant plan benefits to heirs, the question of how to advise the decedent's survivors, executor and trustees grows in importance. This seminar explains:

• Estate tax valuation: are discounts available?
• When and how a beneficiary should disclaim inherited retirement benefits
• 6 differences between an inherited IRA and a regular IRA
• Minimum required distributions — for year of death (and later)
• How multiple beneficiaries can establish "separate accounts"
• Rollovers and plan-to-plan transfers
• Don't forget the "IRD deduction"
• Advising a surviving spouse
• Cleanup strategies when the decedent named the wrong beneficiary

Over 194 Great, Not So Great, and Truly Terrible Ideas, Summarized and Rated. 1 or 2 hours

Your clients are bombarded with dreams and schemes designed to reduce the tax value of their retirement plans. Learn which ideas work, which ones probably don’t, and which will win your client a midnight visit from the IRS.

Plus, learn the tried and true estate planning practices, the nifty distribution tricks used by those in the know, and cutting edge ideas for the daring.

Seminar outline provides a handy checklist of almost 200 ideas — what each idea is, whether it works or not and where to find out more details; plus, thumbnail "client profiles," so the reader can go right to the ideas that his/her clients should consider. This seminar can emphasize areas of particular interest to your particular audience group (such as life insurance planning, trust drafting, Roth conversions, estate planning or lifetime distributions).

Seminar Handout Offer

If you are interested in the "194 Best & Worst Ideas" seminar but unable to attend, you can purchase Natalie's 114-page handout which summarizes 194 planning ideas your clients should consider (or avoid) for their IRAs, 401(k)'s and other retirement plans. Click here for more information.

What Congress, the Courts, and the IRS Have Done to Our Retirement Plans in the Last 12 Months.
30 minutes to 1 hour

Learn what's new and what's on the horizon in estate and distribution planning for retirement benefits. Natalie Choate explains what Congress, the courts, and the IRS have done for (or to) our retirement benefits in the last year, including:

• Suspension of required minimum distributions for 2009
• “Bailout” and “Stimulus” bill provisions impacting retirement benefits
• IRS pronouncement on “Rollovers as Business Startups”
• Charitable IRA rollovers
• Trends in IRS Private Letter Rulings
• Roth plans for everybody! Preparing for 2010 (when the income ceiling disappears), and how to use the new 401(k)-direct-to-Roth IRA rollovers

A Workshop for Lawyers and CPAs: Pros, Cons, and Pitfalls of Naming a Trust as Beneficiary, Including the IRS “MRD Trust Rules”

1 hour version: How the IRS's minimum distribution rules apply to retirement benefits payable to trusts. The five “trust rules” you must not ignore. How to be sure the trust you draft or review is “safe” under the IRS's rules. How trust accounting rules apply to retirement benefits under the new Uniform Principal and Income Act and otherwise.

This 1-hour seminar can be expanded to a 2-hour or 4-hour seminar. The expanded versions are suitable for audiences of primarily or exclusively attorneys since greater emphasis is placed on drafting considerations and technical tax issues. If you want to use the 2-hour or 4-hour version:

It is suggested that this be the only topic of the day, since these longer versions duplicate parts of other Natalie B. Choate seminars.

Contact Natalie B. Choate for brochure descriptions and CPE application timelines.

2 hour version: The 2-hour seminar includes, in addition to the above material, a review of case studies involving funding credit shelter trusts and QTIP trusts (from the "Case Studies in Estate Planning for Retirement Benefits" seminar, above); and the following additional topics: "When is 'a trust for Spouse' the same as 'Spouse'?" under the minimum distribution trust rules, and "How to Fix a Non-complying Trust" (includes: Fixing trust while Participant is living; fixing the trust after death, but before the Designation Date; Other ideas).

4 hour version: The 4-hour seminar includes in addition to the above material, intensive review of two difficult trust income tax issues, namely:

INCOME IN RESPECT OF A DECEDENT (IRD). No stepped-up basis for IRD; When IRD is taxed; Drawback of making IRD payable to a trust; Tax treatment of IRD paid to an estate; Assignment of the right-to-receive IRD; Letter rulings allow fulfilling pecuniary bequests with IRD; and the income tax deduction for estate tax paid on IRD, and how the deduction relates to trust accounting.

THE SEPARATE SHARE REGULATIONS. This portion includes some of the material from the “Advanced Charitable Planning Workshop,” namely: Advantages of naming charity as beneficiary directly; If benefits pass to charity through estate or trust, not directly; No DNI deduction for distributions to charity; allocating IRD that is corpus under the separate share rule — If governing instrument requires funding bequest with IRD; If there is no authority to fund disproportionately; If fiduciary has authority to pick and choose; Avoiding deemed allocation by assigning the benefits; Deduction if distribution to charity occurs in a later year.

2 hours

This seminar combines two other Natalie Choate seminars, namely, "Understanding the Minimum Distribution Rules" and "Case Studies in Estate Planning for Retirement Benefits." This provides a sound introduction to the issues involved in estate planning for retirement benefits.

4 hours

This seminar combines four of the one-hour seminar topics listed above:

The first two hours are a combination of two other Natalie Choate seminars, "Understanding the Minimum Distribution Rules" and "Case Studies in Estate Planning for Retirement Benefits." This provides a sound introduction to the issues involved in estate planning for retirement benefits.

The second two hours provide more information on special topics selected by the sponsor. THE SPONSOR MUST CHOOSE TWO OF THE FOLLOWING ONE-HOUR SEMINAR TOPICS:

• Charitable Giving with Retirement Benefits
• Death and Taxes: The Inherited Retirement Plan
• The 194 Best & Worst Planning Ideas for Your Client’s Retirement Benefits
• Planning for Retirement Benefits: Recent Developments and Current Trends
• Making Retirement Benefits Payable to Trusts
• Roth Immersion Workshop
• When Insurance Products Meet Retirement Plans
• Lifetime Distribution Strategies for Retirement Benefits

This is an intensive course designed for professionals who are experienced in general estate planning and wish to add to their expertise with in-depth knowledge of how to integrate retirement benefits into clients’ estate plans. Designed to be taught from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with three 10-minute stretch breaks and one 50-minute lunch break. Course provides eight 50-minute credit hours; can be shortened to 5 hours and 40 minutes.

Material covered is a combination of the following seminars (described in the list above):

• Understanding the Minimum Distribution Rules
• Case Studies in Estate Planning for Retirement Benefits
• Charitable Giving with Retirement Benefits
• Death and Taxes: The Inherited Retirement Plan
• Making Retirement Benefits Payable to Trusts
• Lifetime Distribution Strategies for Retirement Benefits

Qualified Personal Residence Trusts
1 hour

How QPRTs can save estate taxes for your clients, and how to integrate this useful planning device into your practice. What are the tax benefits of QPRTs, determining which properties qualify, provisions to put into the trust during and after the QPRT term. Things practitioners often overlook in creating QPRTs. New opportunities (and new problems) as a result of EGTRRA 2001.

Your clients, donors and prospects will enjoy and learn from this seminar.

Your IRA/Roth IRA Field Manual
45 minutes to 1 hour

Uncle Sam holds a mortgage on your Keogh plan, 401(k) plan, IRA or 403(b) plan: his “mortgage” is all the unpaid taxes you owe him on your plan contributions and earnings over the year. This seminar explains the rules that dictate when you must take money out of your retirement plan (and pay Uncle Sam his share). Plus, learn how your choice of beneficiary (spouse, estate, trust, children, charity or “other”) can double (or halve) the value of your retirement plan, and how to decide whether a “Roth” IRA may be right for you.