When it comes to joint bank accounts, you should not assume that you will inherit all the money there when the other joint owners die, especially when they had made other plans in their wills. This ...

Lucy Lazarony is an experienced personal finance journalist and writer who got her start in 1998 writing about financial topics. She writes accessible and easy-to-understand articles about credit, ...

Vikki Velasquez is a researcher and writer who has managed, coordinated, and directed various community and nonprofit organizations. She has conducted in-depth research on social and economic issues ...

Many couples worry about how the surviving partner will cope financially when one of them dies. One of the most frequent questions to our columnist Steve Webb is how much state pension a widowed ...

The "stretch IRA" is gone for most beneficiaries who inherit IRAs from people who aren't their spouses. Before 2020, deceased owners of traditional IRAs could leave their accounts to their kids, ...

Managing your taxes can be one of the most complex aspects of estate planning and a new IRS rule change continues that trend. The rule, published at the end of March, changes how the step-up in basis ...