Few financial advisors counsel their small business owner clients on insurance, but they should. Insurance funded by buy-sell agreements is essential for most of these clients.
Insurance firms constantly go through cycles of acquisition and sale when it comes to their broker/dealer subsidiaries. But the current sell cycle is different, and it may shake up how the business works.
In Part 1 of this article, published in the December 2011 issue of Trusts & Estates, I examined a lawyer's duty of care to trust beneficiaries and the current product considerations facing policyholders and carriers. Now, I turn my...
In a January 2010 Trusts & Estates article entitled The Estate Planner's Guide to Product Suitability,1 I suggested that it's imperative to have a process for determining the characteristics of a life insurance policy that's well...
On Dec. 1, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Ruling 2011-28,1 which finally clarified that a life insurance policy in an irrevocable trust isn't included in the grantor's estate if the grantor retains the right to...
Life insurance is a confusing topic in and of itself. Start a conversation about life insurance at your next cocktail party and see what happens. The subject is guaranteed to cause eyes to glaze over, even among many professionals. To rid some of...
A client's lack of sophistication and guidance regarding trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) can put estate-planning lawyers in the hot seat. Most states have now enacted the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA), which imposes a higher standard...