Since the financial crisis of 2008, global markets have been surprisingly resilient. Investors who continued to follow disciplined strategies have recovered much of their losses, if not their confidence. Professional advisors have all worked hard...
Our company, Fiduciary Trust Company International, was appointed executor of an estate of a client who died in 2010. Our client's wife had died in 2005. The value of the estate was approximately $50 million, consisting of a marital trust created...
In March 2009, Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty to federal charges involving a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, money contributed by new investors is used to make payments to existing investors. At some point, the perpetrator can't bring in enough...
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (2010 Tax Act) brought about an increase in the gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemptions to $5 million each.1 Many clients are...
A recent headline in The Chronicle of Philanthropy tells the story: Recession's Hard Lessons Lead to Changes in Endowment Policies: The bulls may be back in control on Wall Street, but the painful lessons that endowment managers endured just a...
Despite Congress’ eleventh-hour move in December to head off sharply higher estate taxes, confusion remains over the future of the levies. The tax revisions lawmakers made at the end of last year set a maximum rate of 35 percent with a $5...
Larry Swedroe calls it the Holy Grail—the search for managers who can deliver returns that beat the appropriate risk-adjusted benchmarks. And it’s “a fool’s errand,” he adds; he spends much of his new book, The Quest for Alpha (John Wiley & Sons)...
The dust is slowly settling after the enactment of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the 2010 Tax Act). Estate planners are beginning to carefully consider a number of opportunities that allow...
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the 2010 Tax Act) creates significantly more multi-generational trust planning opportunities. The 2010 Tax Act increases the gift, estate and generation skipping...