Since my maternal grandfather had eight siblings, the number of cousins on my mother’s side of the family measured in the dozens. I didn’t even know many of their names, but I did know one by his nickname “Dark Cloud”.
I never saw Dark Cloud wear any clothes that were not solid black. He paced around [...]
Twenty two years ago I sat in my corporate tax law class led by Professor George Yin, who would go on to provide economic counsel in the George H.W. Bush administration. Professor Yin had some interesting theories two decades ago that are today making headlines in The Wall Street Journal.
In case you were wondering why [...]
Members of a House and Senate negotiating committee have worked out a compromise resulting in permanently keeping the estate tax at 2009 levels. Specifically, individuals can exempt $3.5 million from taxes (up to $7 million for married couples who have engaged in proper estate tax planning) with amounts above the exemption taxed at a 45 [...]
Did you know that with the exact same assets and the exact same beneficiaries, your estate plan may pay out significantly different amounts to your beneficiaries? In other words, the structure of your estate plan can make all the difference in the world to how much Uncle Sam gets as opposed to how much your [...]
Much has been made of Barack Obama’s pledge to reduce taxes on 95% of American citizens while at the same time allowing the Bush tax cuts favoring the wealthiest Americans to expire. Ari Fleischer, former press secretary under President Bush editorialized in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion page that it is unhealthy to increase [...]
John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group lectured a Columbia University audience earlier this month and what he said was both surprising and illuminating. His lecture focused on the problems leading up to our current financial crisis. While pointing a finger at the usual suspects (lenders, mortgage brokers, regulators, Wall Street traders, borrowers), he [...]
Married couples who have revocable trusts are often counseled to balance their assets between the trusts. There are many reasons for this, some obvious and others not so obvious. In order to understand what’s right for you and your family, you should first understand why a married couple often has two revocable living trusts.
Many married [...]
Self-help and “coaching” gurus promote the thought that in bad times there are a myriad of opportunities, if only people would look for them. They tell us that most people freeze in times of uncertainty, when instead we should be looking for prospects that might not be here several months or years from now.
Do [...]
This just in from the “reaching out from the grave” department: Can you impose conditions on your grandchildren’s inheritance such as requiring them to marry someone within your faith or else they lose the trust funds? This interesting question is currently in litigation before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Looking at In re Estate of Feinberg, [...]
While I was growing up in Indianapolis in the 1960s and 1970s my grandparents, father and uncle owned small men’s and women’s retail clothing shops. At one time there were seven such stores scattered around the metropolitan area. When the 1970s recessions hit, displacing many mid level executives at insurance firms and automobile manufacturers, the [...]