Estate Planning Advisor

[Bruchan]

Hi all - newbie here. Have been lurking a while and now I'm jumping in!

Right now, I'm looking for an estate planning advisor. I'm an American citizen, retired in Japan on a spouse visa and currently applying for PR.

The process brought up so many questions with my wife on how she will manage should I pass away. Most of our assets (75%) are still in the US under JTWROS- composed of the usual IRA, brokerage, bank accounts, etc.

I have been having a hard time finding an advisor that understands all the cross-border implications of estate planning. I have searched this forum and outside as well and still cannot find the right one.

Any recommendations on at least where to look? Also, if any of you have had a good experience and can recommend one, that would be great.

Thanks!

[TJKansai]

Looking forward to hearing how this goes.

[captainspoke]

I'm US, but can't offer anything with this.

If there's no help here, try https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanFinance/ There are several very sharp/knowledgeable people that post there.

[Gulliver]

I don’t have any specific experience with estate planning, but there are two things you can do to protect your spouse from US tax Obligations:

1. Make sure they officially relinquish any US permanent resident/citizenship status/cards to the proper US authorities.

2. File your taxes in the US as married filing separately. Then your spouse will not have to file a US tax return.

Let us know if you find anything else out.

[captainspoke]

I don’t have any specific experience with estate planning, but there are two things you can do to protect your spouse from US tax Obligations:

1. Make sure they officially relinquish any US permanent resident/citizenship status/cards to the proper US authorities.

2. File your taxes in the US as married filing separately. Then your spouse will not have to file a US tax return.

Just a guess/speculation, but based on OP's post, wife likely has a green card. Also, with joint tenancy right of survival, that almost guarantees that they've been a couple (living in the US?) for a long time, likely also filing a joint US return up to this point.

If that's the case, then surrendering past status now, and switching to filing separately, could really mess things up (i.e., how would ownership be divided, and what would the the consequences of that be, on both the US and japan sides). While the US does have things like joint accounts (and property in common), japan does not, so the challenge is how does this american thing get assimilated/perceived by the tax people here.

[Bruchan]

Thank you all for the comments!

We lived for a while in the US, but the last twenty years have been abroad (mostly Singapore). During our last trip back to the US, she did have to relinquish her green card at the immigration office.

I still file taxes in the US as joint, and since I do invest a lot in US markets, I take advantage of keeping my earnings just under the base exemption and LT capital gains exemption so joint filing gives me a lot of advantage there.

Anyway, even though most of our US assets are JTWROS, she is still worried about how she will access them and what she will need to do with US authorites.

I will keep looking for an advisor and let you know if I can find a good one.