How Much are Estate Taxes in Florida?
Video Summary
Hi! I’m Chip Waller. How much are estate taxes in Florida?
Well, you’re looking at Santa here, there are no estate taxes in the State of Florida so you can leave an unlimited amount to whoever you like and there are no estate taxes.
How about the Federal government? Well, the recent tax law provides that you can leave up to over $5,000,000.00 and there are no estate taxes that are due to the Federal government.
If you are married you can leave an unlimited amount to your spouse. And between the two of you, you can leave upwards to $10,000,000.00 jointly. That takes some – a little bit of planning. But, unfortunately, for me, I haven’t happened to have too many clients that have over $5,000,000.00 or even have the $5,000,000.00 to worry about the estate taxes.
Now, if you own real estate outside the State of Florida there may be estate taxes that are owed to another state where the decedent owned real estate, such as North Carolina, New York or whatever other state other than Florida.
But the good news is, Florida does not have an estate tax.
So, if you have some questions about an estate or want to do some estate planning, or have an estate to be administered, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
Thank you!
Ask Thomas Mitchell: How Do I Protect Myself from Nursing Homes Taking all My Money?
Video Summary
Good afternoon! My name is Tom Mitchell. I’m one of the partners at Waller
& Mitchell. We’re located in beautiful downtown New Port Richey, and I’m an
Elder law attorney.
One of the things that I frequently get asked to do is to help people who have a senior family member who has declined in either mental or physical health and has to go into a nursing home, and the family wants to know, is there any way we can preserve some or as much of their assets as we can and still have them go into the nursing home and be taken care of properly?
And, in fact, there is a Federal/State program that provides the nursing home care for individuals who are indigent. It’s called Medicaid, the Institutional Care Program.
Being a welfare-style program, it does have asset and income limitations. For a single person the asset limit is $2,000.00. And for a married couple the asset limit is $120,000.00. For the income limit for a single person who is in a nursing home it’s approximately $2,250.00. For the individual in a married situation and the individual is living at home, they can have as much income as they want.
And so there are some assets that are not counted. The house is not counted. A car is not counted. Retirement accounts are not counted. So there are some things that we can do, however, to help transfer the other assets that are accounted against Medicaid eligibility.
The only thing that you can’t do is you can’t give it away. If you give the money to the kids or the grand-kids then the person going in the nursing home will be disqualified for Medicaid eligibility for a period of time that is related directly to the amount of money that was given away.
So if you want to know how to do any of these things, go ahead and give us a call. I’m Tom Mitchell at Waller & Mitchell. We’re at 5332 Main Street in New Port Richey.
Thanks!
- Published in Medicaid Planning, Videos
What Can a Tenant Do if the Landlord Refuses to Fix the Property?
Video Summary
What can a tenant do if a landlord refused to repair the property? Well, the Landlord-Tenant Statute provides that you can give the landlord a seven-day notice to repair the property, and if they don’t, well, then you’re in a position to terminate your lease and vacate.
What I have found in talking with many tenants is they just want them to fix the property. They really don’t want to move out or can’t afford to move out and probably the landlord would be tickled to death if the tenant moved out, but the remedy that you have is to give a notice to the landlord that he’s got seven days in which to repair the problem and if they don’t, well, then you’re in a position of terminating the lease.
I have done this for some of my tenants in apartment complexes and although they’ve done it properly in my opinion, the apartment complex still has turned over this matter to collection agencies and turned them over to credit bureaus, which you can then contest, but that’s about the only remedy you have, and so if you have some problems, well, you can give me a call at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
How Long Can I Stay in My Property if I Stop Paying the Mortgage?
Video Summary
How long can I stay in my property if I quit making my mortgage payments? Well, you can stay in it until such time as the mortgage foreclosure action is concluded, which is the sale of your property. It’s a public sale or auction, and even after the sale, then whoever purchases it must wait approximately 14 days before a Certificate of Title is issued. You can stay in there for that long, and then even after that time period because then the lender or whoever holds your mortgage must apply for a Writ of Possession, and then if they get a Writ of Possession, then the sheriff will serve that on you and then you have 24 hours to vacate.
I realize I have not given you a timeline as far as whether it’s nine months, a year or two years, and that’s because there isn’t a pat answer to that. It depends on the lender. I’ve talked to people who haven’t made payments for two or three years, and the lender has not filed a mortgage foreclosure action, and even when a mortgage foreclosure action has been filed, many of them languish in the court for years and not be pushed forward.
Also, if you retain the services of our law firm, we’ve been able to assist people in staying in their home for a considerable length of time, even after the foreclosure action, and try and work on trying to get a mortgage modification or resolving the foreclosure action without a deficiency judgment. Also delay it long enough if you want to try and affect a short sale.
So the amount of time as far as days and years or months is dependent upon how quickly your lender moves as far as referring the matter to a law firm to foreclose on you, and then how quickly the law firm proceeds with a mortgage foreclosure action, and even after filing the foreclosure action, how quickly they move the proceedings along. So I tell people if you don’t do anything after you’ve been served with a mortgage foreclosure complaint, you probably have about nine months to a year before they will be able to put you out of the property.
So if you get sued in a mortgage foreclosure action and would like some assistance, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate - Foreclosure, Videos
How Do You Get Rid of an Unwanted Guest?
Video Summary
How do you get rid of an unwanted tenant? Well, you turn to the Landlord-Tenant Act, and the easiest way is if they haven’t paid the rent, you provide them with a three-day notice as to the amount of unpaid rent, and the notice gives them three days to pay the rent or vacate.
If they pay you the rent within the three days, you must accept it. If they do not pay it within the three days, well, then you can then file an eviction action to have them removed, and do not have to accept the rent after the three days expires. The three days are counted, if you served a three-day notice on a Monday, the three days are not up until Friday. They’ve got three full days in which to pay the rent.
You say, “Well, I just don’t want them in there.” Well, if they are a month-to-month tenant, meaning they don’t have a lease, then you can give them a 15-day notice prior to when the rent is due, and terminating their month-to-month tenancy, and then if they don’t move out you can file an action to evict them.
Let me caution you about self-help. You can’t go over there and do repairs and remove the front door. You can’t turn off the power, and if you do any of these shenanigans, well, then they can sue you as the landlord and get three times the amount of rent as damages. So you don’t want to do that!
You can also give a tenant a seven-day notice if they’re violating some term of the lease or doing some kind of conduct as far as damaging the property or not complying with the certain ordinances, and that gives them seven days to come in compliance, and if they don’t, you can then file an eviction action. This is a little more difficult ‘cause you have to prove first that they were not in compliance with the lease provision, usually, and then have to show also that they never corrected it, which is a problem if you have to go to court to evict them. So the easiest way, if they don’t pay the rent, is to give them a three-day notice.
And everybody wants to know, well, about how much do evictions cost? And usually I would say you need to budget between $1,000.00 and $1,200.00 in order to see about getting a tenant out, and that’s in the event that there’s not a whole lot of hearings that you have to go to, and it’s not the eviction from hell.
So if you have some tenant problems, and you need a lawyer to help you with an eviction action, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos