John Wick - What You Need To Know about the Corporate Transparency Act
Once Removed Episode 24: Expressing Goals and Intent for the Trust
Once Removed Episode 22: Building Flexibility into the Estate Plan
Once Removed Episode 20: Helping a Beneficiary Purchase a Home
Once Removed Episode 19: The Step-Transaction Doctrine and the Case of Smaldino
Next Generation Legacy Management - The Essence of Developing, Managing and Implementing a Plan for Future Generations
A Primer On Trusts - A Podcast with Janathan Allen
Once Removed Episode 13: It’s 5 o’Clock: Do You Know Where Your Will Is? A Lesson From Aretha Franklin
Charitable Bequests With Guest Stephanie Hood
Once Removed Episode 12: SLATs and the Case of McKim vs. McKim
Once Removed Episode 11: Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts, or SLATs
Digital Planning Podcast Episode: Family Office Technology Solutions
Digital Planning Podcast Episode: The Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act
What is a self-proving affidavit?
The Importance of Beneficiary Designations
Basics of Estate Planning
The Case of the Disappearing Trust
Protecting Your Estate Plan from Challenges: No-Contest Clause Explained
The Secret Child
Welcome to 'Splitting Heirs'
The TCJA doubled the lifetime exclusion and GST tax exemption. This exclusion amount, adjusted for inflation, is now $13.61 million and is expected to be approximately $13.99 million in 2025. However, in 2026, the amount will...more
The September 2024 Section 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs, CLTs, QPRTs and GRATs is 4.8%, a decrease from the August 2024 rate of 5.2%. The September applicable federal rate (“AFR”) for use...more
If you are in the process of long-term estate planning or updating an existing estate plan, the process for passing assets and accounts to your heirs is about to become much more difficult and expensive. Presently, each...more
Creating a domestic asset protection trust (DAPT) that both has multijurisdictional contacts and is nonvoidable in whole or in part is easier said than done. There are the state conflict-of-laws issues, a few of which I...more
Trusts serve a variety of tax, asset protection and estate planning purposes for families, and over the years different types of trusts have evolved to best serve families’ planning needs and objectives. Each type of trust...more
Earlier this week the White House released its Fiscal Year 2025 Budget. Of course, the federal government has not yet adopted a budget for the Fiscal Year 2024 even as we approach that year’s halfway mark. But I digress. The...more
When it comes to estate planning, addressing all your assets should be a priority. However, certain assets require greater attention than others. For example, if your assets include unregistered securities, such as restricted...more
This is The End- I have dreaded the year end for as long as I can remember. As a teenager and then as a young adult I associated the final quarter of the year, and especially the period beginning on Thanksgiving and...more
April Interest Rates for GRATS, Sales to Defective Grantor Trusts, Intra-Family Loans and Split-Interest Charitable Trusts - The April Section 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs, CLTs, QPRTs and...more
There are more estate planning opportunities as a result of inflation-adjusted figures recently released by the IRS. The gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer (“GST”) tax exemption amounts are each increasing to...more
One can hardly miss the high levels of inflation currently affecting our economy. Even for those who do not pay close attention to the news, where inflation could hardly be more covered, the price of nearly everything for...more
“Déjà vu All Over Again”- The White House last week released the President’s Budget for the Fiscal Year 2023. The Budget is ambitious, but its “investments,” we are told, “are more than paid for with tax reforms focused on...more
Our annual estate and tax planning newsletter discusses certain concepts and techniques that should be considered in 2022 by our clients and friends in California. Perhaps the most important recent development was the failure...more
“Legendary was the Xanadu where Kubla Kahn decreed his stately pleasure dome.” Legendary too were the colossal errors made by Mary Kane in this celebrated classic movie which follows a journalist as he tries to uncover the...more
The House Ways and Means Committee recently released its plan to pay for President Biden's proposed Build Back Better Act. Many of the changes to the Internal Revenue Code proposed by that plan would directly impact gift and...more
House Democrats recently released additional legislative proposals that, if passed, would affect several commonly used estate planning techniques. Among those proposals are three that would significantly impact some of the...more
Advance planning in light of the proposed tax law changes included in the For the 99.5 Percent Act, STEP Act and the Biden Administration’s Green Book. Proposed tax law changes introduced this year provide valuable insight...more
On January 5, 2021, Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock defeated GOP incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their Senate runoff elections, giving the Democrats 50 seats in the Senate. Vice President Kamala...more
In 2020, COVID-19, the US presidential election, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the TCJA), and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (the CARES ACT) dominated the planning landscape....more
Interest rates that are used for loans to family members, loans to trusts and to value gifts to certain trusts have been further reduced as a result of market conditions driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. These historically low...more
Are you stuck at home, isolated from the public, and your normal social interactions? Perhaps this would be a good time to review those old estate planning documents: your Will, Power of Attorney, Health Care Power of...more
September 2019 Interest Rates for GRATs, Sales to Defective Grantor Trusts, Intra-Family Loans and Split-Interest Charitable Trusts - The September Section 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs,...more
April Interest Rates for GRATs, Sales to Defective Grantor Trusts, Intra-Family Loans and Split Interest Charitable Trusts - The April § 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs, CLTs, QPRTs and...more
June Interest Rates for GRATs, Sales to Defective Grantor Trusts, Intra-family Loans and Split Interest Charitable Trusts - The June § 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs, CLTs, QPRTs and GRATs...more
On December 22, 2017, the President signed a major change to federal tax law that contains many provisions affecting individuals, estates, and trusts. While the impetus behind the change was simplification, as some unnamed...more