We are pleased to annouce the addition of Gideon Rothschild to the Trusts & Estates advisory board. He will serve on the estate planning & taxation committee. Gideon is a partner with New York's Moses & Singer, LLP. His specialty is estate...
Wealthy Americans have grown more optimistic about the economy in the last six months, according to an April survey, conducted by mail by the Pinecrest, Fla.-based market research firm American Affluence Research Center. The center's survey of 376...
Advisors often spend too much time scrutinizing investments underlying a private placement variable life insurance (PPVLI) policy and too little on the product's underwriting process. This can be a costly mistake. The mortality charges associated...
Setting up a self-settled special needs trust (SNT) can be an invaluable way to enhance the standard of living of a disabled client. But missteps by a trust administrator in distributing funds can result in the loss of valuable public benefits...
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) have long been regarded as sophisticated tools for business planning. Much like a profit-sharing plan, an ESOP is specifically designed to invest in an employer's securities. Companies large and small have...
Estate-planning attorneys are typically at a disadvantage when billing clients. The problem is rooted, in part, in history. Law firms traditionally viewed estate planning as a loss leader, provided as a value-added service to significant clients...
While 45.2 percent of family offices of every kind single, multi-family and commercial invest in funds of funds today, a whopping 83.8 percent expect to do so in the next three years. This is one of the key findings of a recent survey of 653...
Rules, rules and more rules. Estate-planning professionals are barraged with mandates on what they should and should not do. So, in 1998, the Philadelphia Estate Planning Council (PEPC) decided to help its members sort through the ethical codes...
THE PROBLEM WITH PROBLEMS WITH PPLI Richard Harris' article in the May issue, The Problems with PPLI (page 40) contains many inaccuracies and over-simplifications that require clarification. While it would be too unwieldy to counter each...
The historic origins of trusts stretch back a thousand years.2 Yet the role of the trustee particularly the corporate trustee seems to have changed more in the past two decades than in all its prior history. And many of these changes have...
