GRATS
A grantor retained annuity trust (commonly referred to by the acronym GRAT), is a financial instrument commonly used in the United States to make large financial gifts to family members without paying a U.S. gift tax.
GRATS Headlines
Transfer Opportunities in Advance of GRAT Legislative Change
An interim approach to planning...
A Last Bite at the GRAT Apple?
The House of Representatives has passed, and now the Senate is considering, a bill that would dramatically curtail shorter-term and zeroed-out GRATs...
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...
The Increased Exemption Creates Opportunity
On Jan. 1, 2009, the federal estate tax applicable exclusion amount jumped from $2 million to $3.5 million the most significant increase since the passage...
Fees: How To Charge, Collect and Defend Them
We practice law because it is interesting, challenging, we are good at it, and we are professionals. We also practice law because it is our business....
Transfer Wealth Tax-free
You might think of the gift tax as the lesser of two evils for transferring wealth, with the other evil being the estate tax. Certainly, it can be cheaper...
Economic Crisis Checklist
Here’s how trusts and trust-planning techniques may be impacted. And here’s what planners should be doing now...
Rolling Short-term GRATs Are (Almost) Always Best
As the Internal Revenue Code's Section 7520 rate dropped this year to near-record lows (down to 3.2 percent in May 2008), some estate planners began recommending...
The SCIN-GRAT
Estate planners can learn from financial planners. For years, financial planners have used hedging techniques to reduce risk or to guarantee a desired...
GRAT Effectiveness
Low Internal Revenue Service discount rates make this an ideal time to use grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), as it's easier now to get over the...
The Three Gs
A combination of tax-free gifts to grantor trusts and grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs) can be a powerful way to transfer wealth. Sophisticated...
Long Live the GRAT
Grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) have long been a darling of estate planners. Properly designed, they can transfer future growth in value to family...
Surviving and Thriving In the Tax Patent Era
Just as things seemed to be quieting down)after the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Jalong came the latest challenge to the peace of the estate-planning...
Brentmark Charitable Financial Planner
This nifty program calculates the tax results of charitable transfers and presents them in a way that is easy to use...
Revocable GRATs
Although the grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT) is an excellent estate-planning technique, it can be complicated to create, depending upon the client...
