Charles L. Ratner

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 and estate planning. I see clients aggressively reassessing their...

Do you think that split-dollar arrangements (other than premium loans under the split-dollar loan regime) faded away when the Internal Revenue Service tightened the rules on them in the final regulations issued Sept...

Ever since the Internal Revenue Service issued Notice 2001-101 in January of 2001, planners who advise clients on their split-dollar life insurance arrangements have had to deal with a Byzantine set of rules that...

It seems safe to say, for now anyway, that most clients believe that the estate tax will not be repealed. Reformed maybe, but not repealed. So, the new year is a good time to reflect on what the current planning...

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 implemented after this date or that existed before Sept. 17, 2003...

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 plans that had been established before the Service issued...

Baby boomers are hunkering down for retirement. They are putting computer to spreadsheet, as it were, and running asset and cash flow projections, with frequent stops in Monte Carlo. And after they factor in commonly...

Over the past few years, our clients' estate and life insurance planning have become far more complicated than they bargained for. Even if clients' personal situations and objectives were relatively static, which is a...