John T. Brooks of Foley & Lardner reports: An important recent decision by a California appellate court discusses the malpractice liability of estate-planning lawyers in assessing and documenting clients' competence. Many practitioners may view...
As estate planners, we often are called upon to prepare estate-planning documents for married couples. The planning can take many forms, but often includes a will and revocable trust for the husband and wife. The revocable trust serves as the main...
Federal taxes on income, gifts and estates reduce the fruits of investment success, but otherwise seem unrelated to investment decision-making. Our tax law and culture do not permit U.S. taxpayers to treat their tax returns as an opening bid. In...
Retirement accounts can be valuable assets, but passing them to beneficiaries can be frustrating. Brokers and other custodians of individual retirement accounts can cause problems by insisting on following their own inflexible rules, rather than...
Charles Ratner of Ernst & Young reports: Well, now we have them. On Sept. 11, the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service issued the final split dollar regulations. If these regs look familiar, it's because they're a virtual composite of...
We say that a grantor retained annuity trust that outperforms the Internal Revenue Code Section 7520 rate will succeed; in other words, it will transfer property in a tax-efficient manner. Conversely, we say that a GRAT that fails to outperform...
Here's the bad news: Trusts and estates lawyers, like law firms in general, have been hit by the economic downturn that has battered most of corporate America in the last several years. In fact, 85.6 percent of 619 trusts and estates lawyers...
Whether the primary object of a family's charitable giving is a private foundation, supporting organization, donor advised fund or specific public charity, the family's income tax and estate planning goals may be significantly enhanced by...
If you view your sales assistant merely as a secretary, even a glorified one, then you are handicapping your own potential. If anyone still doubts the role that a talented sales assistant can have in helping gather more assets, he need look no...
Picture this: An older woman with a limited investment horizon her nest egg in a diversified portfolio, but at his advisor's urging, he agrees to move everything into a variable annuity with whopping upfront fees and penalties for early withdrawal...
