Art Is In The Trust Of Fhe Beholder… Or Is It?

The Wall Street Journal is shining the light on a different kind of estate planner: the diehard collector.

http://gty.im/663718

Whether it’s comic books, baseball cards, home video libraries, music memorabilia, Disneyana, or what have you, collections can grow enormous over a lifetime. And with enormity comes value.

But as the Journal points out, the same aficionados who work so diligently to amass a dazzling collection during life often fail to make provisions for their allocation after death.

In deciding which beneficiaries to leave a collection to, and under which terms, there are a lot of things to consider: personal interest, the cost of storing and maintaining the items, the higher rates at which those gifts may be taxed, etc.

One option, of course, is to set up a trust to hold the collectibles during life or after death. Another is to gift part of the collection annually in order to reduce the total size of the taxable estate while staying within the tax-free gift-giving threshold each year.

Charitable donations are an option too, as are good old-fashioned sales. The collection can even be split up, with different portions distributed differently.

Whichever approach works best for you, you’ll need to be thorough in your paperwork and making sure you understand the tax liabilities for each decision. You’ll also likely need to have the collection itself professionally appraised so that you have an actual dollar amount to work with when making those decisions.

If you’d like to chat about the interesting things you collect and how you can best protect them for the future, feel free to give me a call. I’m happy to help.

 

Inheriting A Collection Is Not Always Easy

When parents die, their adult children inherit many things: money, property, family heirlooms and collectables.

Sometimes, it is hard to figure out what to do with the collectables.

Photos (Photo credits: PB Teen)

Photos (Photo credits: PB Teen)

A story I came across in the New York Times told of a woman who inherited a collection of photographs from her mother who had been a photography editor at a magazine. She gave one of the photos to a friend who noticed it was taken by a renowned photographer. It was worth $14,000.

So she looked through all the photos in the box and found many more by the same photographer. In all, there were about 1,400 photos and she had no idea what they were worth or what to do with them.

While you are not likely to inherit a box of valuable photographs, you never know what you are going to wind up with.

Whatever you end up with, you may want to take steps to preserve the items, organize them and archive them. Then you may want to have them appraised.

The key is finding the right appraiser for the kinds of things you want appraised. And make sure the appraiser is reputable. Take your time doing it.