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As estate planning professionals, we see many clients with poorly drafted documents and poorly conceived estate plans. Sometimes the errors made are based on mistakes of fact and sometimes they [...]

Mistakes are often made in estate plans. Unfortunately, the consequences can be devastating. Celebrities are not immune and can be just as guilty of inattention and poor planning as regular [...]

Whitney Houston performing 'Greatest Love of All' during the HBO-televised concert 'Welcome Home Heroes with Whitney Houston' honoring the troops who took part in Operation Desert Storm, their families, and [...]

Many people idolize celebrities and often consider them to be role models. But the truth is that celebrities are just people. Although famous people may have teams of attorneys working [...]

In many ways, celebrities are no different from other people. Even though they often have access to the best managers, agents, and attorneys, celebrities often have non-existent or outdated estate [...]

Like many ordinary individuals, celebrities often have outdated or nonexistent estate plans. Even when a elebrity has done careful estate planning and has well-drafted documents, changes in family circumstances or [...]

The article focuses on the administration of a business owner's federal estate tax using U.S. Internal Revenue Code Section 6166 and discusses steps required to administer the same. Topics discussed include lifetime planning for business owners using Section 6166; computation of the section 6166 payments using audit adjustments, deductions, and administration expenses; and allocation of overpayments.

The article reports on the impact of the economic crisis on undervalued assets in the U.S. Business owners and investors in real estate and other depressed assets believe that the crisis is an excellent time to pass assets to the next generation. Information about the use of a grantor retained annuity fund (GRAT), an estate planning technique that enables grantors to pass family businesses, is also offered.

The article focuses on the risk of high taxes for families with qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs) due to the increases on the individual federal estate tax exemption starting on January 1, 2015 and the top marginal capital gains tax rate.

The article reports on the challenges facing owners of closely held family businesses in terms of succession planning to ensure that the business remains within the family which include operating agreement, transfer restrictions, and estate planning in New York.

The article presents the author's insights on the initiative of the U.S. Congress to permit a surviving spouse to use any unused exemption of the deceased spouse at the surviving spouse's death which was referred as portability, wherein she notes that it has altered the estate planning landscape.

The article focuses on the significant changes made by the 2010 Tax Relief Act to the estate, gift, and generation-skipping tranfer (GST) tax laws in the U.S. It states that the tax act increases and unified the GST tax exemptions to 5 million dollars per person. It notes that the rates will increase by 55 percent starting in 2013. It suggests that business owners and investors must consider optimizing the amount that may be transferred through the use of grantor retained annuity trusts.