life tenant

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Related to life tenant: life estate, Life tenancy

Life Tenant

One who holds a life estate. A life tenant has all rights associated with ownership of real property, except the right to sell the property, until his/her (or someone else's) death. Upon the death of the life tenant, the property reverts back to the owner, or to a third party designated by the owner. For example, in a will, a farmer may grant ownership of his farm to his children, subject to the life estate of their mother. In this situation, the mother is the life tenant and has the right to live in the farm house for the rest of her life. A life tenancy may be included in one's gross estate.

life tenant

A person entitled to the use of or the income from an asset during his or her lifetime. As an example, a person may stipulate in a will that all of his or her assets are to go to a charity but that the surviving spouse, designated as life tenant, is to have the use of the income from the deceased's estate for his or her lifetime, following which the remainder of the assets in the estate are to pass to the charity.

Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor by David L. Scott. Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

life tenant

One who has a life estate in a property, being the right to enjoy the property for a period of time measured by that person's life or some other designated person's life.The rest of the bundle of rights is called a reversion or remainder interest. Life tenants may sell, gift, or will their property to another, but when the defining life comes to an end, so do the rights of those other people.At that point,the remainderman may take possession of the property and enjoy it fully.

Example: Aunt Esther, who is 80 years old, sells her farm to Acme Agribusiness. She retains a life estate, measured by the life of her 40-year-old nephew, Mark. Esther dies two days later, with a will that leaves everything she owned to Texas A&M University. Mark has no rights in the property; he's just a measuring life. Texas A&M may use the farm until Mark's death, at which time it will pass to Acme Agribusiness.

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If the grantor is also named the life tenant in a life estate or enhanced life estate deed, only minimal documentary stamp taxes will be required to be paid upon the initial transfer; however, the full amount of the documentary stamp taxes for the life estate or enhanced life estate deed will be owed upon the death of the grantor.

Failure to Deliver: The Problem with "Pocket Deeds" and a Review of Alternatives

Fairchild, (41) to employ a relatively strict rule for deciding ex ante whether a life tenant can make a drastic change in the use of the property subject to a life estate.

Doctrines of waste in a landscape of waste

For clients who want to give a beneficiary flexibility to change who gets the property when the trust is dissolved, and allow a beneficiary to achieve certain tax objectives, capable estate planners would confer a power of appointment on the life tenant. The set of alternative remainder interests would still control the distribution of corpus, but only to the extent that the life tenant does not exercise the power.

The Uniform Probate Code extends antilapse-type protection to poorly drafted trusts

When the life tenant qualifies for the homestead creditor exemption, the property is still protected from the life tenant's creditors, but it is not safe from the remainderman's creditors.

The impact of co-ownership on Florida homestead

1993) (deed by life tenant can convey only life estate, even if it purports to convey fee simple); ITT Rayonier, Inc.

Teaching property - a conceptual approach

As for the first question, neither the Official Comment nor the drafters' law review commentary(7) presents empirical evidence indicating that most trust settlors want a remainderman to lose the remainder if he does not survive the life tenant, substituting his descendants for him if he leaves descendants.

The Uniform Probate Code upends the law of remainders

Taken together, these statutes require the life tenant to pay:

The new homestead trap: surviving spouses are trapped by life estates they no longer want and can no longer afford

The majority of life estates will run until the life tenants die, in which case the remaindermen will succeed to the entire interest in the property.

TRANSFERS WITH A RETAINED LIFE ESTATE PART TWO: ESTATE TAX

Decisions involving the improvement or sale of the homestead often involve conflicting interests among the life tenant and the remaindermen.

Florida homestead: a difficult post-mortem estate tax planning property

TAM 9604005 should be compared to Letter Ruling 9515039, in which the IRS ruled that in a situation involving a joint purchase, a note issued in satisfaction of the life tenant's annuity would not disqualify the life estate from being a qualified interest in certain circumstances.

Revisiting promissory notes to pay a GRAT's annuity amount

The life tenant is liable for mortgage payments, taxes, and upkeep of the homestead property.

Restrictions on the devise of homestead should be repealed

1014(b)(9), which allows the heirs to take the property with a stepped-up basis equal to its FMV at the lime of the life tenant's death if the life tenant retains his interest in the property at death (Sec.

Transferring the personal residence: income and transfer tax planning issues for the older client