It has been 18 months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and just over a year since the stock market touched its lows. Although the stock market has recovered a portion of the decline, values across most asset categories remain at significantly...
Your clients may fear a huge tax bite after President Obama signed historic health care legislation into law this week. After all, the legislation calls for taxes and fees on high-net-worth individuals and households to cover 22 percent of its ...
Registered investment advisors report that their clients are closing their wallets and watching their dimes and quarters. A survey commissioned by Charles Schwab says that 32 percent of advisors cite “frugal spending habits” as the new...
In recent years, as the economy has faltered and banks have failed, merged and re-emerged, the fiduciary business with its annuity revenue stream seems more attractive than ever. But is it, really? The fact is that the fiduciary business can be a...
A graying widower hires you to reduce his looming estate tax burden and to shelter the wealth he passes on against potential creditors of his descendants. He has three children and seven grandchildren keeping him happy and busy, and he wants to...
Investing for retirement can be problematic for professionals in partnerships or other types of closely held firms. Yes, that includes lawyers in law firms. These individuals tend to spend their early careers focused on building their business. By...
Milwaukee pitcher Scott Schoeneweis is trying to keep prying eyes out of records detailing his dead wife’s demise. Problem is, he’s asking the Arizona courts to seal otherwise public records. The unlikely moral of this story, so far...
An installment sale to an irrevocable grantor trust is a popular estate-planning tool that allows the grantor to freeze the growth of an appreciating asset by selling it to a grantor trust in return for a promissory note. The sale is ignored for...
Recent private letter rulings issued by the Internal Revenue Service1 have created concern among estate-planning attorneys regarding the best way to draft trusts that are intended as potential receptacles of IRA or other qualified plan benefits...
