What is BCE?
Board Certified in Estate Planning (BCE)

This designation is one of the first of its kind. BCE is fully accredited and acknowledged in the financial services community as the way for the practitioner to gain expertise quickly.
Investors who are concerned with the eventual disposition of their holdings are typically well heeled. These savvy investors realize that their choices are limited—either seek expensive legal advice or contact a BCE designee.

Practitioners who complete our certification program offer the best of both worlds: estate planning ideas plus implementation by asset repositioning.

The topics covered in the BCE course are as follows:

Common vs. community law and moving to a different state
Beneficiaries: life, final, alternate, and residuary
Shared gifts, disinheritance, and simultaneous death
Leaving property to children, children later conceived, and educational investment plans
The will as the estate plan centerpiece, types, backup, updating, and challenging the will
The 19 steps of probate, fees, and when probate may be desired
Living trusts, explanations, decisions, and updates

Joint tenancy, back accounts, documentation, and tenancy by the entirety
Pay-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death deeds, and vehicle registration
Life insurance: determining needs, types, beneficiaries, and transferring ownership
Social security, IRAs, pensions, retirement account disclaimers, plus probate and taxes
Estate qualification and state law exceptions to probate
Tax exemptions, estate and gift taxation, tax reduction, basis, and state inheritance taxes
Gifts: federal taxation, reduction, ways to reduce income taxes, and what not to gift

Trusts for tax reduction, control, and probate avoidance
Trustees and taxation, trust limitations, and when a trust begins and ends
Bypass trusts, IRS restrictions, QTIP trusts, and generation-skipping trusts
Irrevocable insurance trusts, QDOTs, and grantor-retained interest trusts
Charitable lead and remainder trusts, comparisons, and tax deductions
Disclaimers: advantages, for couples, living trusts, and IRS rules
Ongoing trusts and gift giving plus three tax-saving trusts

Marital property control trusts, restricting spousal rights and the role of the trustee
Educational, special needs, spendthrift, and sprinkling trusts
Powers of appointment, medical and financial decisions, plus guardianships
Conservatorships, donating a body or organs, and death notices
Services following death, funerals, cremations, and burials

Executor, trustee and successor trustee duties, levels of difficulty, and emotional concerns
Death and physician's certificates, autopsy, personal belongings, and the first week after death
Setting up a filing system, ordering documents, sending notifications, and keeping property secure
Annuity and insurance benefits, pensions, veteran benefits, and wages owed to the deceased
Family allowance, claims, determining validity, gifts to groups, death of an heir, and minors

Legal duties, setting up accounts, managing investments, plus paying claims and debts
Selling property, handling the family business, and giving property to beneficiaries
Raising a child, managing a minor's property, plus personal and practical issues
The final income tax return, trust income, and the surviving spouse
Notifying beneficiaries, trust registration, trustee resignation, and ending the trust
Handling an AB trust and dividing trust assets

The information on this page was produced by the Institute of Business and Finance