With the accelerating globalization of economic relations and the compression of travel and communication distances between countries, increasing numbers of U.S. citizens and residents find themselves holding property in jurisdictions outside the...

From David A. Handler, partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, we have this report: Transfer restrictions in a family limited partnership agreement are disregarded In Estate of Sidney E. Smith III v. United States, No. 02-264 Erie ...

For most advisors, Let's look at your IRA beneficiaries is about the 39th step in the financial planning process if it gets addressed at all. Worse yet, most clients are not even aware who will inherit their IRAs (some divorced individuals, for...

We've been getting a lot of calls from financial advisors about reverse mortgages, and, clearly, we're not the only ones. According to a survey of 111 banking institutions by the Mortgage Bankers Association, there was a 28 percent increase in...

If you haven't gotten your hooks into enough baby boomer clients those 70 million-plus Americans born between 1946 and 1964 who are now heading toward retirement Congress is about to give you a second chance. Sometime early next year, or perhaps...

Florida has evolved into a U.S. tax and creditor protection haven, seducing wealthy individuals to migrate south. One of the biggest draws is that Florida imposes no income tax on individuals and trusts.1 As of Jan 1, 2006, there's also no...

The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act that President Bush signed Sept. 23 included some substantial changes to the legislation initially proposed. What survived the chopping block, what crept in the back door, and what does it all mean for...

We read with great interest GRATs: On a Roll by Julie K. Kwon and Daniel J. Loewy in the June issue. Their article concluded that short-term rolling GRATs can, depending on the circumstances, meet wealth transfer objectives better than a single...

Although trusts are, according to many theories, hundreds of years old, their provisions have changed more in the past 30 years than in the previous 300 years. The catalysts are not only increasingly complex laws, but also the fact that trusts are...