...

The Internal Revenue Service has done a yeoman's service in publishing specimen safe-harbor charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) agreements for inter vivos and testamentary trusts. The specimens issued in August 2005 update, improve and greatly...

Americans pride themselves on their philanthropy. Our economic contributions to charity and volunteerism far exceed those of other countries in the developed world. This has been true since the 17th century when Cotton Mather announced to the...

So, is estate planning an endangered profession or what? The sword of permanent estate tax repeal has been hanging over planners' heads for more than a year now, seeming to threaten many with the loss of their main livelihoods. And just as it...

Two in 2005 had enormous ramifications for estate planning. The first was actually a nonevent; the dog didn't bite the man: The Republicans failed to eliminate permanently the estate tax or even reform it in any way. While the threat of permanent...

Many estate planners these days see the estate planning marketing glass as half empty and leaking. An ever-increasing portion of their clients and prospects even the wealthy ones simply don't find traditional estate tax planning either necessary...

The year 2005 saw a lot of legislative and Treasury Department action in the employee benefit area. This is nothing new. Since the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) came into being in 1974, the laws and Internal Revenue Service's...

Back in 2001, Congress enacted sweeping changes to the transfer tax system, including a host of technical corrections that are important to practitioners. As with all the other provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of...

Upon accepting a trust, a trustee may be given a non-binding letter of wishes by the settlor.1 Such statements are designed to offer trustees of discretionary trusts some guidance in the exercise of their discretion. (For a typical letter of...

If you have business-owner clients run do not walk to check that their pension plans are in order. And if they are not, quickly ask the Internal Revenue Service for forgiveness. The IRS is coming. The IRS is coming. And it'll be much better for...