Wealth Planning

Warren Buffett bet $1 million that the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund will outperform five funds of hedge funds (averaged returns, net of fees) picked by professional money management firm Protégé Partners LLC, Fortune reported this week. Though the...

So now it’s Lehman Brothers in the hot seat. Lehman stock is off by 50 percent this year—almost 20 percent just this week. Apparently, the firm is going to join the write-down party, announcing huge losses on bets on mortgaged-backed...

Often, estate planners and elder law attorneys are faced with the challenge of trying to protect an aging client who's gradually descending into dementia or becoming emotionally needy, making him vulnerable to unscrupulous caregivers, friends...

It can be a thorny issue, whether to compensate the directors of a family foundation1 who are family members and, if so, how much to pay them. Certainly, it's legal to compensate such directors to the extent that payment of such compensation, as...

For the first time, the U.S. Supreme Court has asserted that it not only believes in the taxpayer rights enunciated more than 70 years ago by Judge Learned Hand but also that the court embraces this position even more firmly than the eminent judge...

Little did I dream, when I started practicing 30 years ago in a small office in Fort Collins, Colo., that I would have the opportunity to work with hundreds of philanthropists in fulfilling their visions of how they want to change the world. Along...

Estate planners can learn from financial planners. For years, financial planners have used hedging techniques to reduce risk or to guarantee a desired outcome. This is done by entering into a transaction that moves in the opposite direction as the...

Sometimes even the best relationships go sour. But getting out of a private foundation doesn't need to be fraught with confusion about an uncertain future. By following a straightforward, step-by-step process, you can extricate your clients from a...

About six years ago, I started talking differently to prospective private foundation clients. I used to try to craft a cohesive answer to the most common question I got from financial advisors, accountants and attorneys: How much should the client...

WHEN YOUR FIRM BEGINS TO GROW, YOU HAVE TO HIRE MORE STAFF BUT THAT'S NOT ENOUGH. YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP SOLID PROCESSES TO HELP THEM WORK EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY. Systems: John Vance knew he needed them and immediately. Three years ago, Vance, a...