Category: Blog
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Flex Your Beneficiaries: How to Reduce Income Taxes and Maintain Creditor Protection
We hesitate to publish this, because as soon as we do, Congress will do a roundoff back handspring with a twist and things will change. However, as of this writing, the versions of the Build Back Better Act passed by the House and recommended by the Senate Finance Committee do not include any of the…
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Grantor and Non-Grantor Trusts: Some Thoughts About Turning Off Grantor Trust Status
Since at least 1986, when tax brackets for almost all Americans were compressed, and as a result of Rev. Rul. 85-13, which held that grantor trusts effectively did not exist for income tax purposes, grantor trusts have been one of the most commonly used estate tax planning tools. A “grantor trust” is a trust in…
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Keeping Pace with Afterlife Innovation
Imagine, you’re an estate attorney having a meeting with client who’s been trying desperately to gain access to his late wife’s Gmail account. He knows her emails contain important documents, but he is not exactly sure what or where they are. Google has denied the request because it failed to meet their policy requirements as…
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Protecting Your Client’s Digital After Life
Strictly speaking, digital assets are content that is stored in any electronic format. That could mean photos, videos, emails, spreadsheets or text. New digital formats are constantly emerging therefore the definition of a digital asset is always expanding as well. Rather than a definitive list of file formats that qualify as a digital asset, digital…
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Defined Value Clauses: Ensuring No Adverse Surprises
With very limited exceptions, estate, gift and GST (called “wealth transfer”) taxes are imposed on property’s fair market value (FMV). Only cash and publicly traded securities have definite values for estate and gift tax purposes.
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Understanding a Client Facing Loss
One of the most difficult things we as estate planners face is the eventual and inevitable responsibility of helping and comforting a client whose spouse has passed away.
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The Collectibles Trustee: It’s crucial to place your treasured items in the right hands
Naming an Executor (called a Personal Representative in some states) to administer your estate is an important decision, and can be a difficult one, particularly if you own property that requires special knowledge and attention, such as fine art and collectibles.
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Documentary Film, “Lives Well Lived” Continues to Impact Lives, For Both Young and Young at Heart
In January 2019, at The Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, a select group of InterActive Legal subscribers were invited to a private screening of the documentary film, “Lives Well Lived.”
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The Merging of Estate Planning and Elder Law
Two major pressures are moving the practices of Estate Planning and Elder Law together. The dominant pressure is one of demand. The second pressure is the continuing erosion of value proposition.
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The Cobbler’s Children
I will confess that I, as an estate planner, spent several years without an adequate estate plan of my own. It makes me wonder how many of my colleagues are in the same boat. As estate planners, we should arguably have the most up-to-date and well thought-out estate plans.
