Since 1993, I have been running, like Forrest Gump, down every road I could find to try to discover an antidote to the tragedy inherent in the American version of the Chinese proverb, from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, which...

When a group of Smith family members1 meets twice a year as a board to discuss investments and grantees for their family foundation, much of the procedure appears routine. The members talk about stocks in which some of their foundation's money...

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...

The family office market has become crowded and muddled. Once the domain of easily understood private offices, each dedicated to the needs of a single, very wealthy family, the family office market now includes financial firms of all sizes. The...

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...

David T. Leibell and Daniel L. Daniels, partners in the Stamford, Conn., office of Cummings & Lockwood LLC, report that planners have been buzzing for months about patents of tax strategies. First, the John Rowe case settled in March, 2007. Then...