When IRA custodians get nervous, they often need a private letter ruling to calm them down and tell them that what they're doing or planning to do is just fine. And that's what's happened over the past eight years in the context of whether to...

Financial professionals do it. Insurance professionals do it. Actuaries certainly do it. Yet we, as tax and estate planning professionals, all too often recommend techniques and strategies without doing it. And that is risk assessment. Time to...

Estate planners often must make a decision whether to recommend a family limited partnership (FLP) or family limited liability company (FLLC) to achieve the best federal estate tax savings for a client.1 While many considerations impact the choice...

Despite the dire economic prospects of 2008-2009 and many families' fears that they'd have to shut down their single family offices (SFOs), the train never went off the rails.1 To keep firmly on track, they're thinking outside the box, considering...

It has been 18 months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and just over a year since the stock market touched its lows. Although the stock market has recovered a portion of the decline, values across most asset categories remain at significantly...