Although trusts are, according to many theories, hundreds of years old, their provisions have changed more in the past 30 years than in the previous 300 years. The catalysts are not only increasingly complex laws, but also the fact that trusts are...
Many practitioners believe asset protection planning and estate planning are mutually exclusive. To some extent, this may be true; on rare occasions, clients may present issues so narrow that they can rightfully be classified as one sort of...
Offshore trusts are popular estate-planning tools for a various reasons, especially legal impunity. Some offshore jurisdictions don't recognize foreign judgments, and creditors have limited time to make claims on trusts established there.1 No...
So what exactly are fraud, fraudulent conveyance, deceit and fraudulent transfer and when are attorneys accountable? Being a trustee entails risk of personal liability. Being one of a number of trustees can increase the risk. In the legendary...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in July affirmed the Tax Court's findings in Strangi II that the bona fide sale exception to Internal Revenue Code Section 2036(a) didn't apply to transfers of assets to a family limited partnership ...
While President Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were suffering scathing criticism for their slow response to the crisis Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans and the Gulf region, the Internal Revenue Service and Congress were...
Advisors take note: Baby Boomers and their parents need to do some serious talking. According to a new study, Americans in their 70s are more at ease talking about estate-planning issues than people in their children's generation are. This is the...
Divorcing couples may run the risk of incurring gift tax liability if their attorneys do not draft their settlement agreements with an eye on Internal Revenue Code Section 2702's draconian valuation rules. Despite a recent plateau in divorce rates...
It's easy to forget that retired clients of relatively modest means can actually develop huge adverse tax consequences once they are forced to take minimum IRA distributions. But there are ways (albeit, somewhat complicated on first pass) to save...
When it comes to client-advisor communications about charitable giving, something is amiss. That, at least, is the conclusion of a survey conducted by The Philanthropic Initiative of Boston. The study found that half of all advisors say they...
