Many clients think the foreign trust tax and reporting rules can be circumvented by using non-U.S. persons as nominees. But the United States has rules to prevent potential abuse of tax law by U.S. persons who receive indirect transfers from...
The Internal Revenue Service has been concerned about whether retirement benefit plans qualify for the marital deduction when they're left to a trust that ordinarily qualifies for the marital deduction. Hard to believe that this would even be in...
Robert Craig Knievel, purportedly nicknamed by police after an arrest for stealing hubcaps off cars, was born on Oct. 17, 1938 in Butte, Mont., and died in Clearwater, Fla., on Nov. 20, 2007, at the age of 69. His will, recently made available to...
Choosing a trustee is one of the most important decisions that clients make for their estate plans. Some trust powers may be critical for tax planning but giving those powers to the wrong person as trustee can actually undermine tax goals. powers...
To the Editor: There seems to be an error in the calculations of The Net, Net Gift by Michael S. Arlein & William H. Frazier (August 2008) specifically the article's calculations of the actuarial present value of the additional federal estate tax...
Mock pet trusts if you must. The fact that real estate magnate Leona Helmsley left $12 million to a pet dog named Trouble but nothing to two of her grandchildren certainly left some with the view that pet trusts are silly, and maybe even mean...
Multi-participant trusts1 have become immensely popular. These trusts replace the single, all-powerful trustee with a host of independent decisionmakers, all deriving their authority directly from the trust instrument. At first, we saw multi...
The model for a managing directed trustee (MDT) comes from organizations like family offices and private trust companies (PTCs) that evolved, in part, to support and coordinate a family's trustees and other financial services providers. Family...
If tested, most financial advisors worth their proverbial salt could pass a final exam for Beginning 529 Plans without much cramming beforehand. But clients saving for college have the unfortunate habit of posing problems that go beyond the...
Smart decisions are based on more than government statistics, agency reports, news releases, interest rates and stock quotes. We've selected a few fascinating statistics here that illuminate the markets, the world of financial services and big...
