Once, it was common to advise international clients to set up their tax-free trusts in one of the offshore tax havens places with sun-kissed beaches and afternoon rum breaks. No longer. Now, these international clients should seriously consider...

Modern life creates some distasteful situations. Marriages fail. Wealthy clients want to cut off estranged wives and husbands. Or there's a remarriage and a desire to leave more to the children than to the second wife. Or, a surviving spouse's...

The impact of decisions that planners make about GRATs in transferring wealth can now be more precisely quantified. Advances in quantitative modeling and capital-markets forecasting allow us to evaluate the interactions among the moving parts that...

The Internet provides a wide variety of websites that present resources useful for the various aspects of estate plan preparation, including planned giving, understanding and implementing planned giving techniques, the operation of public...

The Terry Schiavo case incited passionate debate about a number of different issues. While opponents squared off on emotionally charged topics like quality of life and the government's proper role in such an event, there was unanimous support for...

Ask the typical financial advisor if he provides advanced-planning services, and you are likely to receive an affirmative reply 99 percent of the time. This speaks succinctly to the industry's misconceptions about advanced planning. It is not a...

On June 20, all professionals who practice before the Internal Revenue Service and provide tax opinions must change the way they do business. On that date, the now infamous Circular 230 goes into effect, with compliance language so broad it...

For the fourth time in as many years, the House of Representatives voted on April 13 to repeal the federal estate tax. If what Republicans deride as the death tax survives, it'll be because once again cooler heads prevail in the Senate. Many...

The Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Procedure 2005-25 on April 8, providing additional guidance on determining the fair market value (FMV) of a life insurance contract distributed by a qualified plan or an employer. We have this report...