Elder law experienced no cataclysms in 2008. But significant trends emerged and public benefits planning continued to mature. First, the good news: Medicaid asset protection is being extended, state by state, to same sex couples. Also, all states...
Steven J. Best, chief executive officer of Best Law Firm Solutions, has wisely observed that the recent economic hardships only increase the need to have electronic capabilities enhance efficiency. Best advised: Take heart that a sluggish economy...
Back in the summer,1 I warned that the financial markets were headed for serious problems. But even my worst fears pale in comparison to what actually happened: nothing less than a near-death experience for western finance. The markets survived...
Today's investment and political climate is causing a perceptible change in the way many clients approach the role of life insurance in their financial and estate planning. I see clients aggressively reassessing their life insurance needs, whether...
A recent Internal Revenue Service Chief Counsel Memorandum concluded that a trust could not claim a charitable income tax deduction after it had received taxable IRA distributions (that is, income in respect of a decedent or IRD)1 and then...
Wow! During 2008 we witnessed $4 a gallon gasoline, a mortgage industry meltdown, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall from approximately 13,000 to 8,000, and the election of a new president; an African American, no less. And amidst all of these...
At David A. Handler's request, a New York-based team of the Wealth Management Group at Bernstein Global Wealth Management did an analysis of the economic benefits of financed gifts as compared to a sale to grantor trust. Here's the report: To...
One of the questions that practitioners ponder is how to properly discount the value of stock in a closely held C corporation to reflect the future income tax liability on the corporation's unrealized built-in gains (BIGs). For transfer-tax...
You might think of the gift tax as the lesser of two evils for transferring wealth, with the other evil being the estate tax. Certainly, it can be cheaper to pay gift tax rather than estate tax, because of the gift tax's nature.1 But always...
In a bull market, one of the best ways to transfer wealth is by a sale to a grantor trust. Little wonder that it's been so popular for the past 20 years. But a net gift coupled with a loan for the gift tax can transfer more wealth and at a faster...
