At the top of the Estate tab, we have provided helpful pie charts (or aggregators) based on your client's assets and liabilities.
Here is how each is calculated:
Gross Value Today
This is the sum of all asset values before any liabilities are accounted for. As it pertains to life insurance, only current cash value is counted, not the death benefit. As it pertains to secured assets, the market value is counted before subtracting any liabilities secured by that asset.
Net Value Today
This is the Gross Value Today less all liabilities, both secured and unsecured.
Gross Value at Death
This is the sum of all asset values before any liabilities are accounted for. As it pertains to life insurance, the death benefit is counted instead of the current cash value. As it pertains to secured assets, the market value is counted before subtracting any liabilities secured by that asset.
Practice tip: For probate purposes, depending on your state, you can apply a statutory percentage to the Gross Value at Death to explain to your client how much probate is likely to cost if they do not do any estate planning.
Net Value at Death
This is the Gross Value at Death less all liabilities, both secured and unsecured.
Practice tip: In general, this is the number to work from when estimated your client's potential estate tax liability.
Coming soon:
Reworking of the pie charts as concentric circles (gross being the outer circle and net being the inner circle).
An additional set of pie charts that focus on how much of the estate has been funded or not.
A way for the lawyer to enter a percentage and auto-calculate the projected probate costs and estimated estate tax liability.