Many practitioners believe asset protection planning and estate planning are mutually exclusive. To some extent, this may be true; on rare occasions, clients may present issues so narrow that they can rightfully be classified as one sort of...

Offshore trusts are popular estate-planning tools for a various reasons, especially legal impunity. Some offshore jurisdictions don't recognize foreign judgments, and creditors have limited time to make claims on trusts established there.1 No...

Some helpful rulings for retirement benefits planning were announced in 2005. One court ruling defines higher education expenses, a revenue ruling clarifies disclaimers and a series of private letter rulings authorizes numerous trustee-to-trustee...

So what exactly are fraud, fraudulent conveyance, deceit and fraudulent transfer and when are attorneys accountable? Being a trustee entails risk of personal liability. Being one of a number of trustees can increase the risk. In the legendary...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in July affirmed the Tax Court's findings in Strangi II that the bona fide sale exception to Internal Revenue Code Section 2036(a) didn't apply to transfers of assets to a family limited partnership ...

IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY, there have been plenty of government programs that have choked on their own red tape. So it's noteworthy when an expert, who studies the minutia of government mandates, claims that he's identified a federal program that...

When Congress created the Roth 401(k) back in 2001, hardly anyone, including your clients, probably noticed or even cared. Financial advisors and investors were far more excited about the other goodies that the 2001 tax act delivered. However, it...

Fear of a too-small nest egg is the driving force behind many an advisor/client relationship. But such a high level of anxiety might be out of place. A recent report published in the Journal of Financial Planning argues that most retirees spend...