For some time, prominent commentators have requested that the Internal Revenue Service publish official guidance to deal with this increasingly common scenario:1 A deceased spouse's IRA is payable to a trust in which the surviving spouse is the...
The growing number of retirees, their increased life expectancies and the size of their savings led us to wonder: How much accumulated income-producing wealth is needed to maintain a desired lifestyle? In other words, given a target level of...
Economic uncertainties and the full weight of a bear market have many Americans reeling. The squeeze is on for workers: They can't borrow against their homes (that is, those who still have homes). Their credit card limits are being lowered. Yet...
Elder law experienced no cataclysms in 2008. But significant trends emerged and public benefits planning continued to mature. First, the good news: Medicaid asset protection is being extended, state by state, to same sex couples. Also, all states...
Although assets are typically valued for federal estate tax purposes as of the date of death, Internal Revenue Code Section 2032(a) provides that, generally, if an estate elects, [i]n the case of property distributed, sold, exchanged, or otherwise...
Dear federal lawmakers: It's time to change the law so that individual retirement account custodians, not the elderly, are responsible for withdrawing the required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their IRA accounts. Let's stop expecting the...
The Internal Revenue Service has been concerned about whether retirement benefit plans qualify for the marital deduction when they're left to a trust that ordinarily qualifies for the marital deduction. Hard to believe that this would even be in...
Ever since brokers started swapping shares under that buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan, parallels have been drawn between Wall Street and the casino. Wall Street itself recognizes the similarities. Many proprietary trading firms, in fact...
In October, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the private retirement plans of Americans including 401(k) and IRA accounts dropped by some $2 trillion, or 20 percent in the 15 months ending September 30. Yes, those are big, scary...
In September and October, Houston-based financial advisor Mike Robertson was getting 60 calls a day from panicked clients. On Long Island, New York, about 5 percent of Mark Snyder's clients hit the phones. They're saying, What's happening? says...
