Articles

ESTATE TAXATION: GREATER CERTAINTY FOR A WHILE With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, estate planners now have greater certainty as to the future of federal estate, gift, and [...]

PERSPECTIVES ON BUY-SELL AGREEMENTS Most buy-sell agreements have provisions that are based on underlying assumptions designed to protect the buyer or the seller. What are those provisions, and [...]

THE ESTATE PLANNING INTERVIEW We look at the estate planning interview and fact-finding process. Topics include information to be gathered before meeting the client face-to-face, beneficiary [...]

FSP Article 2015 JanHEDGING TECHNIQUES IN ESTATE PLANNING In dealing with various forms of calculated risk, understanding how to play the probabilities can allow a transaction to be successful, [...]

DOES YOUR CLIENT NEED ASSET PROTECTION PLANNING? An asset protection trust may be considered when a client is concerned bout a future liability to a creditor that calls for protection beyond [...]

Planning for Disability with Marital Trusts The General Power of Appointment Marital Trust, complete with a means of establishing whether a mental disability has occurred, can provide great [...]

Should Assets Stay in a Nonmarital Trust or Be Distributed to a Surviving Spouse? With the twists and turns that have affected both estate tax planning and income tax planning, certain long-held [...]

Estate Plans Reconsidered with New Tax Rates When avoiding estate taxation as the primary objective of the trust, the trustee with discretionary control over income might not distribute income to [...]

Transfer Taxes Stay but Low Interest Rates May Go We have just seen pronouncements by the Federal Reserve that lead to the conclusion that interest rates will be rising in the future. This column [...]

New Estate and Income Tax Rates May Change Perspective for Major Gifts Fortunately, while no one can predict the extent of asset growth and the exact mortality outcome for a given individual, we [...]