The Advanced Life Insurance Market May Soon be in RetreatThe Advanced Life Insurance Market May Soon be in Retreat

So-called “advanced” life insurance planning is focused largely, but not exclusively, on providing estate tax-free liquidity at the lowest possible income, gift and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax cost. To achieve that objective, planners and life insurance professionals typically use a menagerie of what I call “multi-factor dependent planning techniques.” Split dollar is the shiniest object in that menagerie, but it has company. While the particular elements of these techniques differ, they share one characteristic: They all depend on any number of things going right. If they do, the tax savings are achieved. If they don’t? Well, so much for that low tax cost, let alone any notion of real economic cost efficiency. Or, as Oscar Wi...