Long-term care (LTC) insurance can be an attractive investment alternative for high-net-worth individuals for two reasons: (1) It has a multi-million dollar upside if extended health care is needed, and (2) there's little or no cost if care...
A great deal has been written in the last decade about trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) and the responsibilities and obligations of trustees/fiduciaries of irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs). Although descriptions of a TOLI may be...
A client who has a personally owned life insurance policy comes to you. You convince her to either sell or gift the policy to an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT). You need to get the value of the policy, so you call the insurance company...
The Dec. 17, 2010 enactment of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (2010 Tax Act) added the concept of portability and dramatically increased the gift tax exemption to $5 million per individual ($10...
Among other perplexing issues facing clients these days is what to do with life insurance policies that are calling out for attention, sometimes very loudly. Clients might be hearing that they need to increase their premiums to support the death...
Life insurance is unique among types of insurance in that it insures against an event (death) that will occur as opposed to an event that may occur. But, although death is a certainty, individuals buy life insurance to hedge against the time when...
Now more than ever, trustees, and in particular, corporate trustees, face administrative issues that arise in relation to an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT), in which the primary asset is one or more policies of life insurance on the...
Last year, a ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals, In Re Stuart Cochran Irrevocable Trust,1 sent a shot-across-the-bow warning to trustees trying to navigate the changing irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) environment. In ruling for the...
The estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax will reappear in 2011. For some insureds and the trustees of their irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), the reinstatement of the estate and GST tax laws in 2011 should have little impact...