Investments Archive
Coping With Fragility
If we had to sum up the current investment environment in one word, it would be World financial markets are currently extremely fragile as Europe heads...
A Survival Guide for Private Foundations and Endowments
It looks like 2012 may be another difficult year for not-for-profits' investment portfolios. Volatility threatens to stay up; yields, down. Many private...
Top 50 Wealth Management RIAs
Our sister publication, Registered Rep., partnered with Meridian IQ to prepare a list of the 50 wealth managers in the United States with the most assets...
The New Investment Alternative
Long-term care (LTC) insurance can be an attractive investment alternative for high-net-worth individuals for two reasons....
Reassessing Risk
Since the financial crisis of 2008, global markets have been surprisingly resilient. Investors who continued to follow disciplined strategies have recovered much of their losses, if not their confidence....
The Great Cash Giveback
Corporations around the world responded aggressively to the global recession and financial crisis, clamping down on spending and hoarding massive piles of cash....
Preferred Partnership Freezes
Preferred partnerships (Pps) are very useful and versatile estate planning vehicles that have been around for decades, yet still appear to fly under the...
A Balanced Solution
When we recommend ways for our clients to reduce their estates, we're mindful that clients generally want a comfortable cushion for retirement. But, providing...
Emerging Alternative Asset Managers
Limited partners (LPs) (for example, family offices) who seek exposure to new and emerging alternative asset managers face a dilemma. ...
Life Insurance Appraisals
Many older clients have little use for their life insurance policies, yet they never consider donating them to charity. In fact, more than 75 percent...
Hedging Your Bets
Life insurance is unique among types of insurance in that it insures against an event (death) that will occur as opposed to an event that may occur. But,...
Walking The Balance Beam
A few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made headlines when he coined a new catchphrase by describing the economic outlook as unusually...
Juggling Accounts
In 2010, the legislature, Internal Revenue Service and courts were busy dealing with retirement benefit issues. Congress expanded designated Roth accounts...
Down to the Wire
For those who advise clients on tax and other financial issues, the final weeks of the year are always a time for careful planning and action. This year...
MLPs: The Latest Trends
Over the past few years, financial advisors, estate planners and investors seeking a source of regular income have become increasingly aware of the benefits...
The Trustee's Role in Directed Trusts
Over the last decade, trust law has undergone a transformative evolution. It's becoming commonplace for trust settlors to design so-called directed trusts...
The Moratorium is Over
It's not news that individual retirement account owners must withdraw required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their IRAs after reaching age 70, or...
ILITs and the GST Tax: How Do We Fund Premiums in 2010?
The estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax will reappear in 2011. For some insureds and the trustees of their irrevocable life insurance trusts...
Domestic Private Placement Life Insurance
Private placement variable universal life insurance (PPVUL) products are available through some of the largest insurance companies in the United States....
Grant Making Isn't the Only Way
Despite the economic recession, private foundations (PFs) led by individual donors and by families continue to form, grow and increase their grant making...
Reputation Management in the Internet Age
Ripped from the headlines: CEO Faces $7 Million Judgment After Son's Driving Conviction in The Financial News Daily; Businesswoman Fires Nanny, Gets Slapped...
Financial Reform Knocks on The Family Office Door
On July 21, 2010, many single family offices watched President Obama sign into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the...
New IRS Holistic Audit Program
The federal government recently has enacted several laws increasing the reporting obligations of both U.S. resident and non-resident taxpayers and imposing...
Investment and Tax Strategies for A Changing Environment
For decades, the United States had a top marginal tax rate as high as 50, 70 and even 90 percent.1 As a matter of fact, for the past 50 years there have...
Mid-year 2010 Investment Outlook
As the Obama administration and Congress struggled to push financial reform legislation over the finish line, the financial markets enjoyed strong and...
Committing to Creating and Maintaining a Private Foundation
Choosing among various charitable-giving options can be a challenging proposition for your clients. The most common options are creating a private foundation...
Take the LEAPS
When the time comes for your client to sell or gift shares of stock in a privately held company, how do you determine the value? Valuation experts use...
The Real Allure of Emerging Markets
The conventional investment wisdom of going where the growth is would suggest increasing equity allocations to emerging markets. But our research shows...
Pre-liquidity Planning
It has been 18 months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and just over a year since the stock market touched its lows. Although the stock market has...
No Train Wreck, Now What?
Despite the dire economic prospects of 2008-2009 and many families' fears that they'd have to shut down their single family offices (SFOs), the train...
Charging Order
A charging order only allows a creditor the right to attach distributions rather than allowing a creditor to succeed to all of the ownership rights of...
The Fully Discretionary Ascertainable Standard
A graying widower hires you to reduce his looming estate tax burden and to shelter the wealth he passes on against potential creditors of his descendants....
Excess Corporate Cash
Logic dictates that valuation experts assume that cash is worth its face value in majority interest or control scenarios. And that assumption makes sense:...
Roth IRA Conversions, Nontraditionally
A Roth IRA is the same thing as a traditional IRA, but with special features,1 including: Contributions to a Roth IRA aren't tax deductible, while contributions...
Cash Balance Plans
Investing for retirement can be problematic for professionals in partnerships or other types of closely held firms. Yes, that includes lawyers in law...
Defined Value Clauses Better Defined
After a 2006 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in McCord v. Commissioner,1 many practitioners expanded their use of defined...
The Illusion of Calm?
The financial markets enter 2010 on a much calmer note than they entered 2009, when the worst effects of the financial crisis were still being felt. By...
The North Winds Howled
The year 2009 was very rough on retirement accounts. Not only did they take a hit from the economic downturn, but also many suffered because of swindlers like Bernard Madoff. And some were drained by the very rules, bureaucracies and agencies set up to administer them. ...
Soften the HEART's Blow
These days, all estate planners must be prepared to attend to the needs of multinational clients. And that means advisors must be familiar with the Heroes...
Stability or False Hope?
The financial markets are no longer trading as though the end of the world is nigh, and for that we can all be thankful. Liquidity has been restored to...
Consider the ESOP
In business succession and estate planning involving a closely held business, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) should be one of the prime planning...
Is It Time To Close The Family Office?
There are an estimated 3,000 single-family offices (SFOs) based in the United States1 and, according to a recent survey by the Wheaton, Ill.-based association...
Got Stretch-Out?
When a trust is to be the recipient of retirement plan assets and you want it to benefit from stretch-out, you're going to need to qualify that trust as a “see-through trust.”...
Charities in Distress
Endowments are down without hopes of a quick recovery. How's a nonprofit to cope? A guide to governance and standards of care in troubled times...
Build America Bonds
Among the many economic stimulus provisions in the American Reinvestment and Renewal Act of 2009 is a short-term program to expand financing alternatives...
Tax Law Update
Once again, the IRS has triumphed over a family limited partnership (FLP) — this time in a fight over the estate of a war hero's widow...
Cleaning Up the Mess Madoff Made of IRAs
There are some measures taxpayers can take to soften the toll frauds have taken on their retirement plans...
What Form Should Your Private Foundation Take?
A quick guide to choosing between two possible entities: non-profit corporation and charitable trust...
How To Help Foundations From Being Madoffed
Follow the complex maze of federal and state laws to (relative) safety...
(Re) Entering the Market?
The study of behavioral finance tells us that people's fear of financial loss exceeds their desire for gain...
QPRTs Can Be A Good Deal Now
It seems counterintuitive, but qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs) can make a lot of sense now...
Is This Time Different?
One of investors' greatest fears today is that the world is on the edge of an economic downturn that may be deeper and longer than anything experienced...
Great Expectations, Disappointing Realities
These days everyone is suffering. The media has been all over the story of the credit bust, the drop in housing values, the stock market's dive since...
How Much Do We Need To Retire?
The growing number of retirees, their increased life expectancies and the size of their savings led us to wonder: How much accumulated income-producing...
Giving In Today's Economy
We are not sounding an alarm that there will be a collapse of charitable giving in 2009. Clearly, conditions are ripe for both an economic and philanthropic...
Let's Get It Right
Back in the summer,1 I warned that the financial markets were headed for serious problems. But even my worst fears pale in comparison to what actually...
Holistic Diversification
A few years ago, Paul, a successful owner of a home-building company, wanted to reinvest his wealth in his business. The real estate market was booming...
Who Are These People?
RIAs Wirehouse Reps Obligation to Clients Fiduciary duty to act in clients' best interests at all times Can put his firm's interests first, as long as...
Asset-gathering Machines
In the first half of 2008, Camden Capital Management, a fee-only registered investment advisor (RIA) in El Segundo, Calif., added $100 million to its...
TIC Alternative: The Delaware Statutory Trust
The tougher financing climate is prompting some tenant-in-common (TIC) sponsors to pursue a more alternative: the Delaware statutory trust. Both investment...
It's Going to Get Worse
Half a century ago, the economic historian Karl Polanyi argued in the classic book The Great Transformation that self-regulating markets never work and...
Clients Cashing Out?
What do clients do with the cash when they receive large cash payments from, say, the sale of a business or a significant asset, such as a house or a...
A SARBANES-OXLEY FOR CHARITIES
David T. Leibell and Daniel L. Daniels of Cummings & Lockwood LLC in Stamford, Conn. report: On June 14, 2007, the Internal Revenue Service released for...
HOW THE HARVARD CRT TECHNIQUE WORKS
Dear Editor: The March issue's, Charitable Giving, column in the Briefing section described private letter rulings issued to Harvard University in 2003...
Alternative Investments: Perils for IRA Trustees
Trustees of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) have increasingly seen participants turning to nontraditional or alternative investments in their accounts....
The Market at Mid-Year
Something funny happened on the road to nirvana. After an unusually extended period of calm, the financial markets began acting like markets again at...
Longevity Planning
Sara and John Fisher are in their mid-50s. Their professional careers are successful and they've amassed about $5 million in assets. While they could...
Alternative Investments The Fiduciaries' Primer
The variety of alternative investments available to the public has exploded in the last 10 years just as prudent investor standards have empowered trustees...
New Customers For Alternative Investments
A recent ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission has made it easier for private foundations organized as not-for-profit corporations with at...
Commodity Link?
As we begin a new year, one very old but important lesson is worth remembering. While consensus investment views are often correct, the strategies used...
Funding the Ventures Of Family and Friends
Private equity is a hot investment these days. And while you may be referring your ultra-high-net-worth clients to established private equity firms, don't...
Donating Real Estate
Real estate has been the fastest appreciating investment for many people during the past several years. With interest rates rising, however, recently...
Commodities In Trust Portfolios
While investing in commodities ranks among the oldest of financial endeavors, commodities today are underrepresented in most trust portfolios because...
ESOP-Assisted Buyouts
One of the most financially attractive exit strategies for the owner of a closely held business is to sell his company stock to an employee stock ownership...
Behavioral Finance Not To Be Ignored
One of the pillars of modern portfolio theory is the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), a theoretical framework for understanding how securities are valued...
Use a 529 Plan?
The primary and most tangible benefit of a 529 plan is the tax-deferred growth of the assets in the plan (growth is tax free to the extent the plan assets...
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King!
It remains to be seen whether anybody was playing a cosmic joke when Hurricane Wilma was tearing South Florida apart at the same time that President Bush...
Private Foundations'Investing Options
Private foundations are usually organized as trusts or not-for-profit corporations. When choosing between the two, advisors tend to focus on ease of formation...
Let's Get Personal
The Institute for Private Investors' annual Family Performance Tracking surveys have found over the past few years that most high-net-worth investors...
Why Not to Invest In Non-Deductible IRAs
People who are too wealthy to qualify for either a deductible individual retirement account (IRA) or a Roth IRA have the option of contributing to a non-deductible...
Lessons From the Case Of the Invisible Picasso
Many art collectors try to avoid paying sales tax, capital gains and, ultimately, estate taxes. They craftily build collections below the radar by paying...
If the Price Is Right
Ever since stock options were listed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1973, the most popular and widely practiced option strategy has been selling...
GRATS: On a Roll
The impact of decisions that planners make about GRATs in transferring wealth can now be more precisely quantified. Advances in quantitative modeling...
Investment Challenges For Private Foundations
Private non-operating foundations in recent years have faced increasing governmental scrutiny of their compliance with the Internal Revenue Code1 and...
Rating the Quarterback
Who do wealth owners trust most for financial advice? Outside their family officers, it's their lawyers and accountants. Clearly these advisors are not...
JOINING T&E INVESTMENT COMMITTEE
The editors of Trusts & Estates are pleased to announce the addition of Jeffrey L. Evans to the advisory board's Investments Committee. Evans, whose article...
Avoiding the Auction Block
On Oct. 28, 2004, a teleconference was hosted by Stephen Wolff of the Ashton Group in Newport Beach, Calif., on the subject of Priceless New Tax Ideas...
Strong Portfolios For An Uncertain Future
In today's accelerated world, true long-term planning seems almost old-fashioned. Unfortunately, emphasis on the immediate creates the potential for shortsightedness...
Valuing Art
Boris Leavitt amassed a fortune in the mail order business and left a contemporary art collection that was appraised at $12.4 million when he died in...
Tough Times
The year 2004 wasn't one in which to take chances; and 2005 is shaping up the same way. The global economy is dependent on two commodities: oil and the...
