Trusts & Estates is pleased to announce the appointment of two advisory board chairs:

• Charles L. Ratner is moving from the Estate Planning & Taxation Committee to take up the chair of the Insurance Committee for 2005. Stephen Wolff, who served as chair in 2004, will remain as a member of that committee.

  Ratner is the national director of Personal Insurance Counseling for Ernst & Young and a managing director of The Ernst & Young Center for Family Wealth Planning. Before joining the firm in 1989, he served as director of the advanced estate and business planning group of a major life insurance company. Ratner is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and Emory University School of Law. He is an attorney, a chartered financial consultant (ChFC) and a chartered life underwriter (CLU). He is a member of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU), the Society of Financial Service Professionals and the American Bar Association.

• Douglas A. Moore is replacing Ratner on the Estate Planning & Taxation committee. Moore will serve as co-chair of the committee, responsible for assigning articles appearing in the second fiscal quarter. That means he is now accepting ideas for the April, May and June T & E issues.

  Moore is national director of estate and charitable planning for The Citigroup Private Bank. He's based in New York. Before joining Citigroup, Moore was senior counsel of the estate and trust services group at Smith Barney. Previously, he practiced trusts and estates law in Manhattan for 16 years.

• Susan B. Slater-Jansen is joining the board to serve as chair of the Retirement Benefits Committee in 2005. She is relieving Natalie B. Choate, who served as chair for several years, requested a reprieve, and will remain as a member of the committee. The staff of Trusts & Estates thanks Choate for her tireless and thoughtful stewardship.

Slater-Jansen is a partner in the New York office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, LLC. She was elected a fellow of The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel in 2000. Slater-Jansen has co-authored the practice guide on “Creating and Administering Trusts Involving Real Estate” for Powell on Real Property, and the “Fiduciary Income Tax Planning” chapter of New York State Bar Association's Administration of New York Estates.