Shortly after her death at the end of March, the Bel Air, California mansion where actress Elizabeth Taylor spent her final years was put on the market by her estate for the list price of $8.6 million: Elizabeth's Taylor's California Estate Listed for Sale. Well, if you're still thinking about purchasing the property, you're too late - an unidentified buyer has apparently purchased the mansion for a yet-to-be disclosed amount. According to the listing agent, David Mossler of Teles Properties, the property sold in a mere 33 days. If you're still interested in owning a piece of Ms. Taylor's estate, you'll just have to wait for the auction of her personal items, including jewelry and art work, by Christie's which is anticipated to take place late this year or early next.

• Elizabeth Taylor's Bel Air Estate Sells
• Who Will Inherit Elizabeth Taylor's Estate?
• Elizabeth Taylor Leaves Bequest to Ex-Husband Larry Fortensky
• Elizabeth Taylor's Jewelry, Clothes & Art to Be Sold At Auction by Christie's
• Famous Wills and Celebrity Estates

As I've mentioned before, my husband is a Yankees' fan, so I was really glad that he got to see Derek Jeter get his 3000th hit on Saturday (on TV of course, not in person!). When I asked my husband what he would do with the ball if he had been the one to catch it, he immediately responded, "I would give it to Jeter." I, of course, was thinking from a gift tax angle - would the person who caught the ball and decided to give it back to Mr. Jeter be subject to federal gift taxes? While the lucky guy who caught the ball, Christian Lopez, did exactly that (and what my husband said he would do) - give the ball, estimated to be worth $250,000, to Mr. Jeter - the gift tax issue is a moot point since the IRS already issued a statement back in 1998 with regard to a fan catching one of Mark McGwire's valuable home run balls: Lucky baseball fan won't git hit with gift tax law.

But the Yankees being the Yankees, they decided to shower Mr. Lopez with, well, for lack of a better term, "multiple gifts." According to journalist Kay Bell in her Don't Mess With Taxes blog:

"The Yankees gave Lopez four Champions Suite season tickets for the team's remaining home games, including playoff appearances. He also got front-row seats for today's [Sunday's] game, as well as three bats, three balls and two number 2 jerseys, all signed by Jeter."

As Ms. Bell points out in a later blog, according to the New York Times, "Steven Bandini, a tax partner at the accounting firm Zapken & Loeb, said that if the items [given to Mr. Lopez] were valued modestly at $50,000, they would probably carry a tax burden of about $14,000." In addition, "The [New York] Times spoke with TaxProf blogger Paul Caron ... who says the goodies Lopez got from the Yankees are analogous to the cars that Oprah audience members unexpectedly received from the talk show host. They had to pay taxes, about $7,000 apiece, on the vehicles."

So there you have it, Mr. Lopez was apparently in the right place but at the wrong time when it comes to such taxing matters.

• Kay Bell: Tax implications of Derek Jeter's historic 3,000th MLB hit; Yankees fan's possible $14,000 tax bill
• What is the Gift Tax and Who Pays It?
• What Gifts Are Subject to the Gift Tax?
• What Gifts Are Not Subject to the Gift Tax?
• How to Calculate Your Gift Tax Liability

Last week I met with a couple who decided to write their own wills back in 2008 using an inexpensive computer program, but on the advice of their financial advisor they made an appointment with me to review them. After taking a look at all of the documents they created, sadly I had to inform them that all they had accomplished was to create a huge mess that would need to be unraveled by their children and a probate judge and cost their children dearly. With their permission, I am sharing some of the problems I found with their documents:

1. Probate avoidance gone wrong. It turns out that in addition to creating their own wills, they had also created a joint Revocable Living Trust. They thought that by doing this their assets would avoid probate. Absolutely not, since the trust was not funded with any of their property. Aside from this, their wills stated that all of their property would go to the surviving spouse and then to the children (not to the joint Revocable Living Trust), which means that any separately titled property (which they currently have) would require probate after the first spouse dies and all of their property would require probate after the second spouse dies.


2. Executors gone wrong. The wills named two of their children as the executors, not the surviving spouse first and then the children. They had no idea they had done this and it was not what they wanted.


3. Revocable Living Trust gone wrong. The provisions of the joint Revocable Living Trust make no sense after the first spouse dies - while the trust agreement states that the deceased spouse's separate assets would be held in an irrevocable trust and the remaining assets would continue to be held in the revocable trust, the document is completely silent on how the irrevocable part of the trust would be administered.

After educating the couple on the main goals of estate planning - to make a plan for what happens to you and your stuff if you become mentally incapacitated and for what happens to your stuff after you die - and showing them the road map to creating an estate plan that will actually work the way they want it to work, we promptly threw their do it yourself wills and Revocable Living Trust into the shredder.

• Should You Write Your Own Will?
• What is Probate?
• What is a Revocable Living Trust?
• Using a Revocable Living Trust to Avoid Guardianship
• Using a Revocable Living Trust to Avoid Probate
• Will Your Estate Plan Work When Its Needed?

Talk sure is cheap. In fact, you can talk all you want about how you want your property to be divvied up after you die and who will be in charge of divvying it up and who won't get a dime, and all of this talk won't cost you a dime. And when the time comes to divvy up your stuff and pick someone to be in charge, it will be state law and a probate judge, not you or your family or friends, who will make all of the important decisions.

You see, without signing a valid Last Will and Testament, your estate will fall under the intestacy laws of the state where you lived at the time of your death and also under the intestacy laws of the state where you owned real estate at the time of your death. So all of that talk about who should get what and who shouldn't get a dime will be irrelevant. Instead, the intestacy laws and a probate judge will make a will for you, and it certainly won't be cheap, nor will it likely be the will you would have made had you taken the time and paid the money to make your own.

I can't tell you how many times I've had children tell me that they were the only child who was supposed to inherit the house or even the entire estate, but poor mom or dad just didn't get around to putting it in writing. And I've even had cases where it was in writing, but the purported do-it-yourself will was not signed with the proper legal formalities, so the purported will was just a worthless piece of paper.

Do yourself and your loved ones a favor - take the time and spend the money to make a Last Will and Testament that will work the way you want it to work.

• What is a Last Will and Testament?
• What Happens Without a Last Will and Testament?
• Should You Write Your Own Will?
• Definition of Intestacy
• What is Probate?
• How Much Does Probate Cost?
• How Long Does Probate Take?