Pre-mortem probate surely that's an oxymoron? A will becomes effective only upon the death of its maker. To probate a person's last will and testament, meaning to prove the will's validity, months or even years before the person dies seems...
On April 17, 2007, the nation lost a grande dame of the arts and culture: Kitty Carlisle Hart, chair of the New York State Council on the Arts from 1976 to 1996, a woman who had an extraordinarily long and varied career in show business. Born with...
While estate tax reform doesn't seem as pressing these days as the Iraq war or immigration, it is an important enough issue that members of the U.S. Senate, from both parties, are discussing possible solutions to the one-year window when the tax...
Thomas Jefferson did it in the 1790s. Ernest Hemingway did it and wrote about it in the 1920s. Today, as well, many Americans move to France to live. Wealthy Americans often purchase homes there, which they visit parfois (occasionally). Some...
does not truly mean Today, trustees and beneficiaries of an irrevocable trust no longer need to blindly accept the trust's terms but instead should consider whether the trust needs remodeling and, if so, whether a decanting statute may be the best...
About eight months ago, my wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). We immediately started to learn everything we could about the disease, so that we could make informed decisions concerning treatment, lifestyle and other critical issues...
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...
