If you’re planning to leave your heirs any sort of inheritance with your estate plan, you’re already giving them a valuable financial leg up. However, some assets make much better inheritances than others.
Streamlining your accounts and simplifying what you own at death can be helpful for your family, says Michael Romero, president of Argent Trust Oklahoma at Argent Financial Group. If you fail to do so, someone will be left taking care of the more complicated property when you die, and during a very emotional period, he says.
Neil V. Carbone, trusts and estates partner at Farrell Fritz in New York, also advises that “failing to look ahead can be especially harmful when it comes to estate planning," because most problems arise after you're no longer around to fix them.
Therefore, with careful planning, you can prevent the emotional and even family-destroying fights that can happen with some of the worst assets to inherit. If you’re able and willing to do this type of advanced planning for your heirs, here are the six best assets to leave behind as an inheritance.
“Cash is king when it comes to leaving an inheritance,” said Carbone. “It’s the simplest asset to deal with in terms of a transfer.”
Your heirs immediately know how much it's worth, can easily divide it according to the terms in your will, and don’t have to do any hard work to access it — versus something like real estate, which can take months to sell.
Romero advised that if you have cash saved in several different banks, you can make life even easier for your heirs by consolidating, especially in your later retirement years. “Every bank could have different rules for distributing an account, so reducing the number could speed up the transfer.”
He warned, though, to make sure you stay within the FDIC, NCUA, and SIPC limits to keep your bank deposits safe. The FDIC insures up to $250,000 in individual deposit accounts and up to $250,000 for each person’s share of joint accounts, and the NCUA protects up to $250,000 per credit union member.
Carbone also said to let your children know that because they could be receiving a sizable amount of cash, they should consider speaking with an adviser about what to do with it. “Chances are, they will have different long-term financial needs and goals than what their 80-year-old parent was doing by holding onto cash.”
Besides cash, Romero described a few types of accounts that are almost as effective as cash inheritance. For one, life insurance on yourself. When you pass away, the life insurance company will pay your heirs the death benefit in cash, according to the beneficiary instructions you list in the contract. This bypasses probate so your heirs don’t have to wait for the courts to verify your will before receiving the money.
It’s a simple process. Your heirs typically just need to present your death certificate to the insurer and fill out a short form. Plus, your heirs will receive the payment income-tax-free, though the death benefit is added to the value of your estate and could be charged estate taxes.
You can use our tool below, powered by Bankrate, to compare life insurance policies today.
Bank products like money market accounts and CDs are also liquid inheritances that your heirs can easily divide and cash out right away (though they may forfeit some interest for cashing in a CD ahead of schedule.)
You can set up “payable upon death,” or POD, instructions for bank accounts, which also bypass probate. “This is safer than making your heir a joint owner on the account because otherwise, they’d be able to drain the funds while you’re still alive,” said Romero.
If you use either of these assets, Romero cautioned that you should carefully plan and review the instructions. “Life insurance beneficiary and POD instructions pass by contract, not by will,” he said. In other words, even if you list something different in your will, the bank or insurance company will still pay out according to what you listed in your beneficiary and POD terms. This is why it's essential to know what is included in a will, and what you should leave out of your will entirely.
One common situation where people get in trouble is after a divorce. “It’s not uncommon to have an ex-spouse still listed, and then they inherit the money,” said Romero. You should also watch out for changes in your family. For example, maybe an heir passes away or a new grandchild is born who you’d like to add. Romero recommended reviewing these instructions every year or two to make sure they’re correct.
Investments made through a taxable brokerage account, like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, also make for attractive inheritances. They are easy to divide and value because your heirs can see the market price of these publicly traded investments. In addition, publicly traded investments are easy to sell and convert to cash.
On top of it all, your heirs could receive a significant tax benefit on these inheritances. “Perhaps Dad has been investing all his life and has held shares of Apple, IBM and Microsoft for years. If he sold during his lifetime, he’d owe considerable capital gains taxes,” said Romero.
For example, someone who bought IBM Stock 20 years ago would have a cost basis of roughly $28 per share. If they sold at today’s price of about $163, that would be a taxable gain of $135 per share.
However, if you hold these investments until you die, you receive something called a step-up-in-basis, which means the investment basis goes up to the market value on the day you die. “If your heirs sell soon after you pass away, they could sell these appreciated assets owing little to no taxes,” said Romero.
This step-up-in-basis treatment also applies to real estate, an appealing tax break if you’ve owned your home or other property for many years. However, real estate can be a more complicated and expensive asset for your heirs to deal with, and more likely to lead to arguments around how to handle it. One way around this problem is to direct the executor of your will to sell the property immediately after you pass away. Your heirs then receive the cash from the sale without owing capital gains taxes.
This isn't a strategy for everyone. Therefore, it should be considered in more limited circumstances.
If it looks like you might owe estate taxes at death, Carbone has a clever strategy that can help reduce the tax hit. "This strategy works if you know your heir plans on using the inheritance to buy an expensive new toy, like a Porsche or a boat," he says. "These assets lose value immediately after the purchase.”
According to Carfax, a new car loses about 10% in value within the first month it’s driven off the lot and 20% in the first year of ownership. Other valuable assets like boats and jewelry can depreciate even more quickly — even when they're still practically as good as new.
Rather than leaving your heirs cash, you could buy these valuable assets yourself towards the end of your life and then leave them as an inheritance. Since these assets lose value immediately, it reduces your total net worth and taxable estate.
For example, if you buy a $500,000 boat and it loses 20% in value before you die, your heirs only owe estate taxes on $400,000, not $500,000. Spread over many heirs and many purchases, this can significantly reduce the estate tax hit.
While the federal estate tax exemption is currently very high — $13.61 million per person for 2024 — Carbone said that Congress could lower it in the future. And even if lawmakers don't do so, the current law will sunset in 2026, reducing the exemption by more than half. Eighteen states also charge estate or inheritance taxes, so this strategy could also be useful if you live in one of those states.
A Roth IRA is a retirement account funded with after-tax dollars. In exchange, your retirement withdrawals are income-tax-free, including your investment gains. This tax-free treatment continues when your heirs inherit the Roth IRA, making this another effective asset to leave behind.
On the other hand, if you leave behind a 401(k) or traditional IRA, your heirs would owe taxes for taking the money out. Anyone receiving an inherited retirement plan (except a spouse) must also withdraw everything within 10 years of their death whether they need the money or not, which can push them into a higher tax bracket.
If you have both types of retirement plans, consider spending down your taxable accounts or using them for charitable donations while keeping your Roth IRA balance for a future inheritance. Another option if you have money in taxable retirement plans is to consider a conversion to a Roth IRA. You pay income tax upfront on the amount you convert, but after that, the IRA assets and future growth will not be subject to income tax when withdrawn.
Carbone warned when considering a Roth conversion, it is important to consider the overall income tax impact. “It may be that it’s less tax efficient overall for a parent in a higher tax bracket to pay the income taxes necessary to make a Roth conversion than it would be for a child in a lower tax bracket to pay the income taxes on withdrawals from a traditional IRA,” said Carbone. This strategy can take advantage of the rule allowing your heirs to spread the taxable withdrawals over 10 years, whereas with a conversion you owe taxes on the entire balance at once.
This final suggestion is less about the type of asset you may leave and more about the way you leave that asset —in a trust fund, versus leaving the property directly to your heirs. A trust fund can help protect the inheritance of your loved ones.
“If you leave property to your heirs outright, it’s subject to the claims of their creditors and predators,” said Carbone, with predators being other people who might seek to have your family members part with their inheritance, such as a spouse who has plans on how to spend that money or who files for divorce soon after the inheritance is received and commingled with marital assets.
A trust fund can also protect your loved ones against themselves. If you worry they might spend the money too quickly, you could set up a trust that limits how much goes out over time, including passing wealth on between generations, like first payments go to your kids and then continue to your grandkids.
Last, you could use trust funds as part of an overall estate plan strategy to reduce how much you owe in taxes. For example, you transfer assets you think will increase in value to a trust now so that growth isn’t part of your taxable estate later.
