38 THE QUEENS COURIER • BUSINESS • FEBRUARY 14, 2013 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com business s Photo Courtesy Investors Bank Investors Bank president Kevin Cummings. Offi cers installed The Brandeis Association, the bar association of Queens County for Jewish judges and practitioners, held its annual installation of its offi cers and board at Temple Torah on January 9. Pictured are Hon. Randall Eng, Presiding Justice, Appellate Division, Second Department; Hon. Bernice Siegel, Chair, Brandeis Association; honoree Hon. Jeremy Weinstein, Judge, Civil Matters, Queens County, given the Louis D. Brandeis Award for Excellence; Neda Melamed, President, Brandeis Association, Israel Israel + Purdy; Hon. Jodi Orlow, Judge, NYC Civil Court. Elder Law Minute TM Maximize the Benefi ts of your IRA in Estate Planning BY RONALD A. FATOULLAH, ESQ. AND DEBBY ROSENFELD, ESQ. Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”) are very popular investment vehicles for retirement, but IRAs also need to be taken into account when contemplating one’s estate plan. Although IRAs can be used to provide for one’s intended heirs either directly or through a trust, proper planning is still required to ensure maximization of the benefi ts of this unique vehicle and avoid unnecessary taxes. An IRA is a personal savings plan that allows an individual to set aside money for retirement and simultaneously create tax savings. The advantage of an IRA is that often an individual can deduct from his/ her taxes all or a portion of the contribution made to the IRA. Further, earnings in a traditional IRA are generally not taxed until the earnings are distributed to the IRA holder. This typically does not start until the IRA holder reaches the age of 70 ½ when distributions of income become mandatory. Earnings in a Roth IRA are not taxed nor does one have to start taking distributions ELDER LAW at any age, but contributions to a Roth IRA are not deductible. Any amount remaining in one’s IRA upon his/her death can be paid directly to a benefi ciary or benefi ciaries. From an estate planning perspective, the most critical thing to remember with an IRA is to name a benefi ciary (or benefi ciaries). Therefore, it is important to review your benefi ciary designations annually. While a spouse is usually the logical choice for a married benefi ciary, each IRA holder should be certain to name contingent benefi ciaries as well. If no benefi ciary is named or the named benefi ciary predeceases the IRA holder and there is no successor benefi ciary, the IRA will pass according to the default rules of the IRA plan which generally is to the holder’s estate and will be subject to the lengthy probate process. If an IRA holder does not need the funds held in the IRA for his/her retirement and instead wants to use them to provide for future beneficiaries, “stretching out” the IRA might be an idea that warrants exploring. To do this, when the IRA holder reaches the age of 70 ½, he/she should withdraw only the minimum required distribution thereby leaving more assets in the IRA. When the IRA holder dies, the beneficiary can also stretch out the distributions over his/her lifetime and then designate a secondgeneration beneficiary. If appropriate, it is prudent to name a young beneficiary, because the younger individual receives smaller distributions and this gives the funds in the IRA additional tax-deferred years to grow. In some cases, it may make sense to name a trust as a benefi ciary. This is particularly true if the IRA owner has minor children, children with special needs or a child who has poor spending habits. However, the trust must be properly drafted in order to avoid negative tax consequences. If the trust is drafted as a so-called “conduit” trust, then the distributions from the IRA RONALD FATOULLAH, ESQ, CELA* to the trust after the participant’s death can be stretched out over the life expectancy of the oldest trust benefi ciary. Anyone contemplating leaving his/her IRA to a trust should seek the counsel of an experienced estate planning attorney to ensure that the trust is properly drafted. Ronald A. Fatoullah, Esq. is the principal of Ronald Fatoullah & Associates, a law fi rm that concentrates in elder law, estate planning, Medicaid planning, guardianships, estate administration, trusts and wills. The fi rm has offi ces in Forest Hills, Great Neck, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Cedarhurst, NY. This article was written with the assistance of Debby Rosenfeld, Esq., a senior staff attorney at the fi rm. The fi rm can be reached by calling (718) 261-1700, (516) 466-4422, 212-751-7600 or toll free at 1-877-ELDER-LAW or 1-877-ESTATES. Investors Bank has arrived BY HELEN KLEIN hklein@homereporter.com Investors Bank – which took over Marathon Bank -- has a long history of involvement in the neighborhoods where it hangs its hat, noted bank president Kevin Cummings, who said that one of Investors Bank’s goals, as it moves into different neighborhoods, is to “make a difference in the communities we serve.” “People are very thirsty to have a good community bank come in and we are very excited to be here,” Cummings stressed. “We think it’s a great opportunity for us, for our customers and for the community.” Cummings said the bank’s intention is to make the transition as easy as possible for former Marathon Bank customers. While the bank’s name has changed, the branch staff has remained the same, he said. “Hopefully, to customers, it’s only the signage that changes,” he stressed. “We try to make the customers feel comfortable. No one likes change, but,” he added, Investors Bank will, “give the same great service, the same attention to detail at the customer level, but with more options to service the client. It’s the best of both worlds.” For instance, said Cummings, Investors has “opened up a loan production offi ce in New York City,” that does “commercial real estate lending, primarily multifamily lending. “We felt it was a great opportunity,” he added, “to match up lending with the retail side of loans. Plus, in New York City, especially in the outer boroughs, there is tremendous opportunity for a community bank. “In Brooklyn or Queens, you go four blocks and you are almost in a different city,” Cummings went on, noting that a community bank can, because of its size, “get close to customers and the community. We can service customers with the opportunity for greater services, larger loans.” There’s also the outreach aspect. When Investors opens up in a community, said Cummings, “we partner with a local charity. As every account is opened, we make a donation of $25 to that charity.” In fact, the bank and the Investors Foundation donate about $1.5 million to local not-for-profit organizations annually. Later this month, said Cummings, the bank will be a sponsor of a cultural event highlighting a book about the fall of Constantinople, Queen of Cities, at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, on East 74th Street in Manhattan. For the New Jersey-based Investors Bank, which was founded in 1926 as a mutual holding company, the acquisition of Marathon is not its fi rst foray into the New York market. That began in 2010, when the bank acquired Millennium Bank, which had two branches in Astoria and one in Mineola. The bank followed that up with the acquisition of Brooklyn Federal Savings, which had fi ve branches in Brooklyn and Long Island. With the addition of the former Marathon branches, said Cummings, “Now we have 23 branches in New York in just 24 months.”
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