Insurance Archive

The Estate Planner's Guide To Product Suitability

Out in the field, life insurance policies are generally not selected, designed or funded to most effectively support today's complex estate plans and...

A Buy-Sell Innovation

Traditional buy-sell agreements can't always solve all problems dealing with death, retirement, withdrawal and disability without creating difficulties...

The Beauty of SCINsurance

Historically low interest rates have made self-canceling installment notes (SCIN) an attractive estate-planning tool and a viable alternative to life...

Long-term Care Lawsuits Will Just Keep Coming

Many long-term care (LTC) insurance carriers are facing an avalanche of lawsuits from disgruntled policyholders,1 some involving policies more than two...

Climate Change

Today's investment and political climate is causing a perceptible change in the way many clients approach the role of life insurance in their financial...

Discount Private Split-Dollar Does It Work?

Do you think that split-dollar arrangements (other than premium loans under the split-dollar loan regime) faded away when the Internal Revenue Service...

Insurance LLC Helps Business Owners

Owners of closely held businesses have long sought ways to buy the interest of an owner who dies. They also have sought ways to enjoy the business' success...

Today's Split Dollar

The final split-dollar regulations that were effective as of Sept. 17, 2003 (T.D. 9092) became the operative guidance for arrangements that either were...

Life Insurance In Qualified Plans

Most people would like some life insurance. Problem is, no one really wants to pay for it. So, since the beginning of time, life insurance professionals...

Still Nervous About That Insurable Interest

For years, advisors have gone blissfully along in their planning for families and business owners, devising wonderfully helpful trusts and solving liquidity...

Handle With Care

Do you know how many of your clients own non-qualified deferred annuities?1 Does their estate planning consider how those annuities are subject to different...

What To Do With Those Existing Split-Dollar Plans

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...

Keep Up With Your Clients

Baby boomers are hunkering down for retirement. They are putting computer to spreadsheet, as it were, and running asset and cash flow projections, with...

Sell Your Policy?

Who should consider life settlement as one alternative to managing life insurance capital? When is a settlement a wise decision? What factors should be...

Get the Best Offer

Most people would say the hardest part about the life insurance business is getting people to pay for the insurance. I disagree. Once a person selects...

SPLIT-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITIES

Although the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have significantly diminished its income tax advantages, split-dollar insurance can...

PPLI Primer

Cash value life insurance through its tax-deferred growth of the cash value, tax-free access to that cash value and a tax-free death benefit can provide...

THE FMV OF LIFE INSURANCE CONTRACTS

The Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Procedure 2005-25 on April 8, providing additional guidance on determining the fair market value (FMV) of...

Premium Financing Solutions

Many wealthy clients and owners of closely held businesses need to acquire a substantial amount of life insurance to provide liquidity to pay for their...

Using FTDs In Buy-Sell Plans

Smart business owners plan for the orderly disposition and transfer of their interests in their companies in the event of their death, disability or retirement....

Cash Out or Cash In?

Many of our clients who bought cash value life insurance policies are taking a hard look at their policies in light of changed circumstances or a changed...

A New Way Of Doing Business

The past year was difficult for life insurance in estate planning. This year will be worse. But the astute insurance professional and other members of...

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Build a Better Endowment

Solid university endowments can survive economic storms...

A Pitch for Privacy Rights

Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher asks court to seal the records of his wife’s cocaine-related death...

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Accruit

Streamlining the management of like-kind exchanges...

Analyzing ILITs

InKnowVision has a spreadsheet-based software that helps wealth planners look at irrevocable life insurance trusts...

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Download The 2009 Findings from a Nationwide Survey of Estate Planning Attorneys

Podcasts

Advising the Wealthy:
It's a Whole New Game

Charlie Ratner talks with estate-planning expert Lou Harrison, investment guru Michael Lewitt and retirement benefits specialist Mike Jones. Register for this timely podcast......

Webinars

Aligning Charitable Giving & Life Insurance

Best Practices, Planning Techniques, and Philanthropic Benefits. Tanya Howe Johnson, President & CEO of the PPP, Kelly Kidwell, President & CEO of Pacific Advisors and Chairman of the AALU Charitable Planning Committee, and Phil Cubeta, the Sallie B. and William B. Wallace Chair in Philanthropy at the American College. Available On Demand!...

Integrative Philanthropy

Times are tough - in fact, donors are more careful to integrate their philanthropy with their financial and estate planning. Robert F. Sharpe, Jr. and Marc D. Hoffman describe the current philanthropic/political landscape and review the techniques that donors of means are now increasingly using to optimize their giving.
Available On Demand!...

The Electronic Practice

Learn how to get the most out of your computer as you work with trusts and estates matters. Sponsored by Sungard -
Available On Demand!...

Press Releases

Findings from the Third Annual Industry Trends Survey

WealthCounsel, a nationwide organization of estate planning attorneys, and Trusts & Estates magazine today released the results of the Third Annual Industry Trends Survey which was released at the 44th Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning educational conference....

2009 Events