Practice Development Archive
The Changing Face of American Wealth
In 2008, the generation had just begun to enter retirement when the great recession intervened, postponing plans for many, shattering dreams for some...
Death and Damages Can Be Taxing
You may have clients who are plaintiffs in a wrongful death or survival lawsuit (based on another's death) or in a lawsuit stemming from their own personal...
The State of Estate Planning
On Dec. 17, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the Act). The Act...
The $52 Million Lunch
Funny things happen in the practice of law. This column will share some of them from over 30 years of my practice with clients all over the world. On...
Goodbye to Gobbledygook?
Congress proclaimed that the Plain Writing Act of 2010 (the Act)1 will improve the effectiveness and accountability of the IRS and other [f]ederal agencies...
Non-tax Issues in Estate Planning
Like you, I always knew non-tax issues in estate planning were important. But I never realized how important. With the chaos in 2010 on the tax side of...
A Shot Across the Bow
Last year, a ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals, In Re Stuart Cochran Irrevocable Trust,1 sent a shot-across-the-bow warning to trustees trying to...
Securities Laws and Estate Planning: Where Do the Roads Cross?
If you're an estate planner, you're probably not an expert in securities laws. But you may have clients who are of publicly held companies or who own...
Business Succession as an Evolutionary Process
Most family business succession studies focus narrowly on the succession event itself or on some of the changes in leadership and performance that occur...
Bringing It Home
Planning for an existing foreign non-grantor trust that has one or more U.S. beneficiaries presents complex challenges for trustees and professional advisors....
Time to Consider Terminating a Charitable Remainder Trust?
As advisors and their clients are waking up to potential tax rate increases in 2011 or 2012, they're reconsidering a number of tax deferral strategies....
Going Non-Vertical With Fund Interests
The vagaries and draconian nature of Internal Revenue Code Section 2701 have understandably led to widespread deference to the vertical slice rule. ...
Offshore Asset Protection Trusts
The death of the offshore asset protection trust has, by some, been greatly exaggerated.1 In recent years, attacks on a few such trusts under extreme...
McKinsey Report Identifies Five Attributes for Success
Family businesses are the backbone of the American economy. In fact, 90 percent of the approximately 15 million businesses in the United States are considered...
Scratching Your Head Over 2010 Estate Plans?
We're now entering the eighth month of 2010 a year in which we've had no estate tax. We're also facing possible legislation and uncertainty on other issues...
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...
An Adviser's Guide for Reviewing Life Insurance
Once issued, a life insurance policy can remain in effect for decades. During this time, the original owner's goal and objectives may have changed, or...
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...
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...
Settlor Incompetence and The Trustee's Quandary
It can be difficult on a personal level to watch a client, whom you may have known for years, begin to lose his mental capacity. But if that client is...
Estate Planning for Unmarried Partners: Detriment or Opportunity?
Unmarried partners don't enjoy the protections and benefits that are unique to marriage. For example, unmarried partners aren't entitled to an intestate...
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...
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...
The Passive Activity Loss Rules
Estate planners often must make a decision whether to recommend a family limited partnership (FLP) or family limited liability company (FLLC) to achieve...
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....
Consider the MAT
Recent private letter rulings issued by the Internal Revenue Service1 have created concern among estate-planning attorneys regarding the best way to draft...
Situs Shopping
Perhaps one of the most noticeable developments I'm seeing in the last couple of years is clients and their advisors paying increasing attention to situs...
Family Office Technology
Even in the past few years, there's been a quantum leap in the ability of modern technology tools designed to improve work group efforts and data management...
Babe Ruth Hit Home Runs, But His Foundation Struck Out
Babe Ruth's biographer, the sports writer Leigh Montville, has written that the famous baseball player's early years, spent mostly in an orphanage, are...
Estate Tax Exemption Portability?
It would provide a valuable bailout for certain clients—but could hurt others...
To My Son, I Leave All My Passwords
The need to deal with passwords and digital property at death is coming at us faster than we may think...
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...
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.”...
Tax on a Phantom Tax
A recent decision out of New Jersey Estate of Stevenson v. Director, Division of Taxation1 illustrates a novel issue arising under the decoupled estate...
How To Help Foundations From Being Madoffed
Follow the complex maze of federal and state laws to (relative) safety...
QPRT Exit Strategy
Okay you've sold your clients on the potential estate tax benefit to be achieved with a qualified personal residence trust (QPRT)...
Borrowing To Pay The Estate Tax
What to do when there are not enough bucks to take care of the financial damage...
It's Personal
As estate-planning attorneys, we often find ourselves forced to act as family counselors for our clients despite our lack of formal training for this role...
QPRTs Can Be A Good Deal Now
It seems counterintuitive, but qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs) can make a lot of sense now...
As the Hearse Pulls Away
During the course of an estate's administration, a personal representative performs four basic functions: (1) marshals assets; (2) determines and raises...
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...
Burials - Going Green, Greener and Greenest
Perhaps the first time most people would've heard of a green burial was in the last episode, aired during summer 2005, of the blockbuster HBO series,...
Let's Finally Perfect The Spousal IRA Rollover
For some time, prominent commentators have requested that the Internal Revenue Service publish official guidance to deal with this increasingly common...
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...
Welcome To Your Nightmare
The evil eye of Congress, much like the eye in The Lord of the Rings, is focusing on Middle Earth and Middle Earth is us. Rumors abound about the details...
Time to Gift Low
Wow! During 2008 we witnessed $4 a gallon gasoline, a mortgage industry meltdown, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall from approximately 13,000 to 8,000,...
Who'll Be Left Standing?
On Feb. 20, 2008, my husband, Peter Nesvold a newly minted partner at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. came home and said, I think my firm is going bankrupt....
Shake Up!
The economic crisis is hitting the family offices of America's wealthy. Expect closings of both single family offices (SFOs) and multi-family offices...
Tech For Tough Times
Steven J. Best, chief executive officer of Best Law Firm Solutions, has wisely observed that the recent economic hardships only increase the need to have...
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...
Jenkens & Gilchrist: Another Shoe to Drop?
When Jenkens & Gilchrist, the 56-year-old national law firm based in Dallas, closed its doors for good in March of 2007, it also seemed to mark the end...
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...
Practice Professionally
A lot of advisors, even the most reputable, groan when the word is uttered. Let's talk ethics, is like being told, Let's eat steamed broccoli. Sure, it's...
Lawyers' Group Protests The Appraiser Penalties
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA)1 imposes new penalties on appraisers that are deemed to have made substantial or gross valuation misstatements....
Cold Snap for DAFs
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA), which so radically redefined the rules for supporting organizations, also transformed the rules for donor-advised...
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...
Patenting Tax Strategies
If you were listening on May 20, 2003, you might have heard the collective gasp of tax practitioners across the country. On that day, the United States...
Sad Reward
May you never have to experience the legal and banking problems, not to the mention the gut-wrench, associated with posting a reward to help find a missing...
SPLIT-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITIES
Although the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have significantly diminished its income tax advantages, split-dollar insurance can...
It Couldn't Hurt
Many estate planners these days see the estate planning marketing glass as half empty and leaking. An ever-increasing portion of their clients and prospects...
Nailing the Lawyer For His Debtor-Client's Sins
So what exactly are fraud, fraudulent conveyance, deceit and fraudulent transfer and when are attorneys accountable? Being a trustee entails risk of personal...
How to Buy Software
In the world of trust and estates software, no package is all things to all users trying to perform a given task. So, when looking to buy software, focus...
T&E Software and Online Resources
This article updates the guide published in Trusts & Estates, volume 143 (January 2004) and examines trust and estates software and online resources....
