Helping a client with estate planning usually means a discussion of trusts, life insurance, and various gifting strategies, which ostensibly will protect the client's family and finances in the decades after his death. Yet one related topic that...
Estate planners have new opportunities to save taxes for their clients using deathbed planning techniques in states that have decoupled their estate taxes from the federal estate tax. Before the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of...
If you provide estate-planning services to wealthy aging clients, there’s one detail you might not want to overlook—because many of your clients probably have. Although most wealthy Americans plan to leave their money to their children...
Whenever a client wants to cap gift tax exposure, planners should consider using a defined-value clause implemented by use of an escrow trust. A defined-value clause limits the quantity of assets gifted or sold until a final determination of value...
Many estate-planning attorneys have used total return trusts to cope with falling yields in an effort to balance the income beneficiary's need for income against the remaindermen's need for growth. In a low interest rate environment...
A dynasty trust can offer significant benefits, but achieving these benefits is not simple. Crafting a well-constructed dynasty trust requires the planner to clear hurdles presented by various provisions of tax and trust law, including not only...
It's been a stable of estate planning for many years to have an irrevocable life insurance trust own life insurance. But advisors are careful to warn clients that if they transfer an existing policy to such a trust and die within three years of...
Lawyers get requests for powers of attorney all the time, and they're easy to churn out and then forget. But beware. Powers of attorney also are very easily abused. So easily, in fact, that the Illinois docket where we practice is flooded with...
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA)1 imposes new penalties on appraisers that are deemed to have made substantial or gross valuation misstatements. These stiff penalties are articulated in new Internal Revenue Code Section 6695A (see Go to...
