A potential client called to ask a question that he claimed was “simple”. After a ten minute dissertation outlining a very complicated fact pattern – all I could say was, “It depends.”
He wasn’t very thrilled with my answer, and I can understand why. It would seem that lawyers sell more “Depends” than Walgreens and CVS [...]
When my family moved to Clearwater in 1980, my father joined forces with his brother in his brother’s accounting firm. Unfortunately, that partnership didn’t work out. The conflicts lead to family strife, and the ultimate dissolution of the business. Both brothers ended up working in separate firms, and to this day they don’t interact often, [...]
More than 90% of all U.S. businesses are family businesses, accounting for over 78% of our country’s employment and 150 of the Fortune 500 Companies. Yet only 30% of these family businesses will survive into the family’s second generation, 12% will make it to the third generation and only 4% survive to the fourth generation!
The [...]
Did you ever have a teacher that answered all of your questions with a question of her own? That’s the way I felt sitting in the nation’s largest annual professional estate planning conference held in Orlando last week. Attending this conference is like taking a full semester’s course load of post-graduate level tax law in [...]
A common question that I’m asked involves which expenses the estate can and should pay when a loved one dies. The question sounds something like this: “Craig, my father just died and I’m his personal representative. I’m flying in my wife and children, my sister and her family are all coming too. Can I pay [...]
Growing up, one of my favorite relatives was my Aunt Libby – who was a real pistol. Those of you who are Hoosiers and who ever frequented Libby’s Deli at the downtown Indianapolis City Market (Governor Bowen and Mayor Lugar could often be found at the lunch counter munching on Libby’s famous Bar-B-Q sandwiches) would [...]
Madison, my youngest daughter – asked me if she could go over to a friend’s house. I told her that she could - only to be vetoed by Patti. “She didn’t clean up her room like I asked her to,” Patti said. “And I don’t think that she should be able to go over to [...]
Let me start the new year off with one of the most common questions I encounter in my practice. That question goes something like this, “I’m not a millionaire and my estate is not taxable, so I don’t need a trust do I?”
Whether you would benefit from a revocable living trust does not really have [...]
Last week I wrote about the uncertainty surrounding whether and how the federal estate tax might be extended into 2010 and beyond. As of January 1st without further legislation being enacted the federal estate tax disappears for one year, only to be replaced with a capital gains tax system that is difficult for lay people [...]
If someone dies when their home, residence or other mortgaged property is “under water”, what should the personal representative of the estate do? Should they continue to make the payments on the property to keep it current until it sells? What happens if the sales proceeds are not enough to cover the mortgage note? Should [...]