Businesses intended to remain family-held after the death of the founder need planning that goes far beyond the orderly and tax-efficient transfer of ownership interests. For ownership transfers to succeed, owners and leaders of family firms also...

For years, practitioners have employed the estate-planning strategy known as sale to a grantor trust.1 Yet there's still substantial uncertainty and debate about one critical aspect: the detrimental income tax consequences that can result when a...

Carolyn DeVore of Pullman & Comley, LLC, in Westport, Conn., reports: The United States and France ratified significant protocols to their income tax and estate tax treaties on Dec. 21, 2006. The income tax protocol allows a U.S. citizen working...

Estate planning for New Jersey's more than 22,0001 same-sex couples has undergone several seismic changes for the better since 2004. First, the state legislature passed the Domestic Partnership Act of 2004, providing them with limited recognition...

Sam Beemer had asked his two sons to come to a family business meeting. Having just celebrated his 70th birthday, he was feeling his mortality.1 And he'd been thinking about how to transition the family business interests worth $100 million. Sam...

College savings 529 plans are expected to flourish over the next five years, with assets more than doubling over the period.

Relationships among aging seniors can bring great joy - or grave financial risk

The battle began in earnest more than 40 years ago: How do we determine discounts for lack of marketability (DLOM)? In the 1970s, valuation experts applied a benchmark method. The following decade, experts touted a pre-IPO method. By the latter...

Tax cases offering guidance on the valuation of restricted securities are few and far between. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in its 1998 McClatchy decision1 treated the shares of an affiliate decedent as restricted shares...