The good news in elder law is that there was no big news in 2007. That's a relief after years of new federal laws enacted to restrict people's access to needed public benefits and their ability to protect their remaining assets. Of course...
During the past decade there has been a significant increase in the number of taxpayers engaging in Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 like-kind exchanges. In 2003, the last year for which data was published by Deloitte Tax LLP, there were an...
There's a lot of good news from the frontlines of individual retirement accounts (IRAs). There was a parade of private letter rulings, many quite beneficial to taxpayers. Some rule changes also made life easier. Alarming First, though, one sour...
For at least two years, fiduciaries have been chewing on three major issues that threaten to choke them: the courts' misinterpretation of the Uniform Prudent Investor Act's (UPIA's) requirement for portfolio diversification, the Internal Revenue...
The Internal Revenue Service has just issued a number for a private letter ruling that I obtained for a client. In PLR 200747002, the Service for the first time approved a premium-splitting mechanism to fund the purchase of life insurance. The...
The bursting of the subprime mortgage bubble and subsequent market meltdown in the summer of 2007 vividly illustrate Karl Marx's adage that history tends to repeat itself: the first time as tragedy; the second time as farce.1 This summer's farce...
We have all witnessed government overregulation of medicine. Doctors with whom I consult personally and on behalf of clients tell me that physicians are no longer in charge of their practices. Regulators tell them how long their patients' hospital...
It seems safe to say, for now anyway, that most clients believe that the estate tax will not be repealed. Reformed maybe, but not repealed. So, the new year is a good time to reflect on what the current planning environment, broadly defined, is...
Last year ushered in a new titleholder for the wealthiest man on earth: Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim took that honor, knocking Bill Gates and Warren Buffett into second and third place. And the two American icons of wealth could fall further...
With so much buzz about the RIA world's rapid growth in assets and number of advisors, news about the other independent channel seems to be slipping through the cracks. Just a few years ago, it was the independent broker/dealer firms that were...
