Estate Planning Techniques

Heidi Scott is the owner of Schuyler Brown Land Title in Mt. Sterling, Illinois. An Illinois-based attorney, Heidi Scott is an expert at estate planning, tax law, and real estate.

Besides deciding the fate of your assets after death, estate planning also entails safeguarding your assets during your lifetime and resolving any potential issues that may arise in the future. When conducting estate planning, attorneys make use of several approaches.

Firstly, transferring a property to a trust for a defined number of years effectively avoids paying estate tax on a property. This trust is called a Qualified Personal Residence Trust. It allows you to give property without paying taxes while reclaiming possession later. The property’s gift tax value is often a fraction of what it would have been if the owner had retained it until death.

Similarly, a Family Limited Partnership allows people to bestow lifelong gifts without giving up control by assigning non-voting or limited partner shares in a family limited liability firm. These are essential family businesses that assist in decreasing estate taxes by lowering the amount of a person’s estate. As a bonus, gifts and assets delivered through these organizations are shielded from creditors.

35 ILCS 5/502 Innocent Spouse Relief

An experienced attorney and certified public accountant, Heidi Scott owns and operates her own private tax and estate practice in Mt. Sterling, Illinois. Before establishing this practice in 2008, she spent 15 years as a tax attorney with the Illinois Department of Revenue. One of Heidi Scott’s biggest achievements in the public sphere was instituting the 35 ILCS 5/502 law’s Innocent Spouse Relief provision into state statutes.

As defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), “innocent spouse relief” provides taxpayers exceptions from tax payments, penalties, and other liabilities that arise from the negligent omission or improper reportage of tax document items on the behalf of a spouse or former spouse. Tax collectors can typically only garner these tax payments from the spouse or former spouse who is responsible for them. Specifically, Illinois’ 35 ILCS 5/502 provision offers innocent spouse relief protection to any state citizen who meets the standards for this relief as determined by the IRS and Section 6013(e) of the Internal Revenue Code.

When Should You Start Estate Planning?

Based in Illinois, Heidi Scott owns and operates Schuyler Brown Land Title, a firm that does Illinois real estate title examinations. She also leads the Law Offices of Heidi Scott, which focus on the legal areas of tax law, real estate, and estate planning.

Estate planning involves legally documenting who will take care of your assets or how they’ll be passed down in your absence. While most young people think they don’t need an estate plan until they’re older or have more money and assets, financial experts recommend individuals start estate planning upon reaching 18. They recommend this because at 18 you legally become responsible for your finances and healthcare in some states. If you start estate planning at 18, you should review the plan every three to five years as your wealth grows.

One of the key advantages of beginning an estate plan early is that it will give you peace of mind that your assets such as stocks, bank accounts, life insurance policies, belongings, home or apartment will be accessible to your family and will help support them when you can no longer do that.

An Introduction to Soccer Substitution Rules

Heidi Scott has spent more than 12 years as the owner of Schuyler Brown Land Title, a real estate title and document services provider based in Mt. Sterling, Illinois. Outside of work, Heidi Scott enjoys engaging with various community organizations, including spending time as an indoor soccer coach at K&L Arena in Quincy, Illinois.

Soccer coaches are tasked with managing a number of strategic objectives over the course of a game, including lineup management. Unlike many sports, such as basketball and football, soccer places strict limits on when and how often substitutions can be made.

At any given point in a game, soccer teams have seven players on the sidelines, waiting to act as substitutes for the 11 active players. However, teams can only make three total substitutions in a game. Furthermore, the active player that is substituted cannot return to action. These two rules force coaches to carefully consider which 11 players should start the game, which players should be substituted, and when they should be substituted.

Substitution rules become more important and complex when a player is ejected from the game, as teams are not afforded a free substitution to replace this player. If the goalkeeper, for example, is given a red card, coaches must decide between using a substitution to put a backup goalkeeper onto the field and playing at a significant defensive disadvantage.

It should be noted that there are various exceptions to standard substitution rules. For instance, exhibition and pre-season games often follow an unlimited substitution policy, allowing coaches to get a look at all of the players on their rosters. And recently, the COVID-19 pandemic led FIFA to temporarily amend substitution rules so that teams can make five total substitutions. Finally, youth and school soccer leagues typically allow for many more substitutions compared to professional leagues, often observing the unlimited substitution rule.