The qualified personal residence trust, or QPRT,1 has faded in popularity due to declining interest rates (lower interest rates make QPRTs more expensive), stock market losses (which make clients less rich), and the prospect of estate tax repeal ...
Estate planners are finding the revocable living trust (RLT) to be an increasingly popular and useful tool. Some, however, are guilty of overstating the benefits of the RLT, and this can confuse clients and lead to some embracing RLTs for the...
Making a profit in smaller qualified retirement plans has been difficult for advisors because of high costs. However, it's gotten easier in the past couple years, thanks to the emergence of shares, or retirement shares. Advisors using A shares...
Estate taxes may be the bane of wealthy families, but they are a boon for wealth managers because clients need their help with trusts, gifts and investment vehicles that minimize the impact of estate taxes. So the Bush Administration's proposal to...
It'd be easy to write off 2004 as a year of much talk and little action when it comes to trusts and estates law easy, but misleading. While it's true that Congress failed to enact estate tax legislation, a major tax law it did pass, the...
The implications of a case handed two years ago have not been adequately appreciated by practitioners. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Oct. 16, 2002, affirmed a decision of the Tax Court denying an estate tax deduction for a...
In the 1880s, early in John Singer Sargent's career, he confronted a dilemma when painting children's portraits for wealthy English patrons. The artist, born in Italy to American parents, had studied art in Paris then practiced in France. But his...
Although he played Superman on the silver screen, it was after Christopher Reeve broke his neck and became paralyzed in 1995 at age 42 in a horseback riding accident, that he became a symbol of courage and hope to the world. Against the odds...
The year 2004 saw developments in retirement benefits ranging from new final, minimum distribution regulations for defined benefit plans to a crackdown on abusive Roth IRAs. Many of the highlights have been addressed in Trusts & Estates during the...
This letter is in reaction to the article A Threat to All SNTs by Mark Merrick and Douglas W. Stein, which appeared in Trusts & Estates' November 2004 issue. The thrust of their article is that the passage of the Uniform Trust Code will cripple...