Jun 01, 2012

Now’s the time to start discussing annuities for retirement planning with your client

Jun 01, 2012

Insurance firms constantly go through cycles of acquisition and sale when it comes to their broker/dealer subsidiaries. But the current sell cycle is different, and it may shake up how the business works.

Hedging ETFs Inside Annuities

Jun 01, 2012

A new program is not cheap, but some say it's worth it.

Managing Trust-Owned Life Insurance

Apr 01, 2012

In Part 1 of this article, published in the December 2011 issue of Trusts & Estates, I examined a lawyer's duty of care to trust beneficiaries and the current product considerations facing policyholders and carriers. Now, I turn my...

Life Insurance Product Suitability, Revisited

Apr 01, 2012

In a January 2010 Trusts & Estates article entitled The Estate Planner's Guide to Product Suitability,1 I suggested that it's imperative to have a process for determining the characteristics of a life insurance policy that's well...

Substituting a Life Insurance Policy in an Irrevocable Trust

Apr 01, 2012

On Dec. 1, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Ruling 2011-28,1 which finally clarified that a life insurance policy in an irrevocable trust isn't included in the grantor's estate if the grantor retains the right to...

A Look Back at Life Insurance

Jan 01, 2012

Life insurance is a confusing topic in and of itself. Start a conversation about life insurance at your next cocktail party and see what happens. The subject is guaranteed to cause eyes to glaze over, even among many professionals. To rid some of...

Watch Your Back and Cover Your Tracks

Dec 01, 2011

A client's lack of sophistication and guidance regarding trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) can put estate-planning lawyers in the hot seat. Most states have now enacted the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA), which imposes a higher standard...

The New Investment Alternative

Jul 01, 2011

Long-term care (LTC) insurance can be an attractive investment alternative for high-net-worth individuals for two reasons: (1) It has a multi-million dollar upside if extended health care is needed, and (2) there's little or no cost if care...

An Ounce of Prevention

May 01, 2011

A great deal has been written in the last decade about trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) and the responsibilities and obligations of trustees/fiduciaries of irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs). Although descriptions of a TOLI may be...