Wealth Planning

If the Blackstone Group ever goes public, it sure would be cool to get an allocation of the IPO. Imagine your clients at cocktail parties, bragging about how they are “in” enough to have gotten a piece of that deal. (Sure might help...

Back in the day, being an institutional consultant was cool. Retail advisor? Ha, that was crawling on your belly. Well, today, the institutional pension plan is essentially dead (or, put another way, no business is going to go out and create a new...

How much does a client need to save for out-of-pocket health care costs in retirement? It’s a question even the brainiest, actuarial propeller head will wrestle with. But with recent studies pointing to the comparatively poor health of...

Lawyers get requests for powers of attorney all the time, and they're easy to churn out and then forget. But beware. Powers of attorney also are very easily abused. So easily, in fact, that the Illinois docket where we practice is flooded with...

If a client is considering using a corporate trustee as a sole trustee, co-trustee or successor trustee, he'll probably want to interview several institutions and his estate-planning lawyer should be intimately involved in this process. While...

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA)1 imposes new penalties on appraisers that are deemed to have made substantial or gross valuation misstatements. These stiff penalties are articulated in new Internal Revenue Code Section 6695A (see Go to...

It's been five years since the Internal Revenue Service issued Notice 2002-8, the pronouncement that was supposed to clarify treatment of those split-dollar plans that had been established before the Service issued the final regulations. But many...

Asset protection planning is a moving target. Practitioners must constantly be aware of case developments and changes in the law, which must be reflected in their plans. Nevertheless, some advisors operate by rote and give every asset protection...