An installment sale to an irrevocable grantor trust is a popular estate-planning tool that allows the grantor to freeze the growth of an appreciating asset by selling it to a grantor trust in return for a promissory note. The sale is ignored for...
Recent private letter rulings issued by the Internal Revenue Service1 have created concern among estate-planning attorneys regarding the best way to draft trusts that are intended as potential receptacles of IRA or other qualified plan benefits...
After a 2006 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in McCord v. Commissioner,1 many practitioners expanded their use of defined value clauses for certain transfer tax planning strategies. But many lawyers remained reluctant...
In a 2002 article,1 we examined at length the income-tax effects of the termination of a grantor trust by reason of the death of the grantor in the context of an installment sale.2 Acknowledging then that the law was unsettled, we considered the...
In 2009, asset protection specialists watched a major Internal Revenue Service drive to flush out secret foreign bank accounts while a financial crisis brought to light mammoth Ponzi schemes and took down publicly traded companies. But we saw few...
Perhaps one of the most noticeable developments I'm seeing in the last couple of years is clients and their advisors paying increasing attention to situs and jurisdiction selection in estate planning. Indeed, they're regularly considering...
The unsettled estate tax environment and harsh economic climate have created a new competitiveness: to be considered the jurisdiction for trusts and win the most trust business. Clients certainly are benefitting. If they select the right...
