Yes, but that’s a pretty big “if.” Your mom can pass up to $650,000 or so to her heirs when she dies, tax free. That stock will be valued in the estate at $20,000, but unless you are over the $650K mark you won’t pay any estate tax on it. If it seems that her estate WILL hit taxable levels (lucky you!), then some planning is in order to pass on gifts at the rate of $10,000 per person per year to try to reduce the tax burden all around.
Just re-read your post, Sue. That asset that mom wants to give you? If the fair market value is $20,000, that’s what the value of the gift is, so she can’t give it to you without declaring it as a gift even though her basis is less than $10,000.
What she CAN do is give it to you and Dale together ($10,000 to each of you) or, if Dad is still alive and married to her, the two of them can be deemed to have each made a $10,000 gift to you and can pass that $20,000 asset right over to you.
Hey, Melin, you’re interrupting my “book reading”.
“Way cool!” In SoCal all laypersons are also wet surfers, right. Dunno if that flies in the sedate Maritimes or even in BC. You musta been shipped in from NY, right?
Sure don’t envy WhiteNight in the job of reforming you, even if he puts a ‘K’ in that username. He should check your trail around the board here a bit to assess his newfound job.
Anyhow, everybody, thanks for the inputs. I’ll link them on to someone who maybe can use some of them. It tends to be Greek to me, the moneyless one and poor prospect for lawyers to get rich from.
