Even the most sophisticated estate planners may be missing the point of grantor trusts. It's a risk-free, transfer-tax free, effortless wealth transfer tool that is much more powerful than most advisors realize. It amplifies the benefit of any...
Virtually all of us in the estate-planning community regularly use life insurance trusts and dynasty trusts to achieve huge estate tax savings. And these savings can be compounded for future generations if the trust accumulates some of its income...
Wealthy grandparents and parents have learned to fear trust fund babies and with good reason. Trust fund babies are infamous for leading pointless, consumer-oriented, slothful lives. Based on our experience during the past 25 years, roughly 80...
Long-term capital gains and distributions from traditional individual retirement accounts (IRAs) exist in separate constellations of the tax universe.1 But there is at least one convergence: If a trust is named as a beneficiary of an IRA, after...
Any trusts and estates attorney who has been in practice for more than a few years is likely to have dealt with an incapacitated trustee. A common problem is that of a superannuated trustee who is no longer capable of either administering a trust...
So, is estate planning an endangered profession or what? The sword of permanent estate tax repeal has been hanging over planners' heads for more than a year now, seeming to threaten many with the loss of their main livelihoods. And just as it...
Two in 2005 had enormous ramifications for estate planning. The first was actually a nonevent; the dog didn't bite the man: The Republicans failed to eliminate permanently the estate tax or even reform it in any way. While the threat of permanent...
Back in 2001, Congress enacted sweeping changes to the transfer tax system, including a host of technical corrections that are important to practitioners. As with all the other provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of...
