I avoid cocktail parties. While I occasionally enjoy a nice glass of wine over a quiet dinner with my wife Patti, and perhaps some friends, I’m not a social drinker. My impression is that cocktail parties tend to bring out the worst in people when they’ve had one too many. At one such occasion an […]
The other day I wore a Jerry Garcia tie while I ate Cherry Garcia ice cream. Jerry Garcia, for those of you who don’t know, was a former member of a popular 1960’s era band, The Grateful Dead. He was a colorful artistic man whose paintings became popular. Now deceased, his estate continues to bring […]
Do you remember when Texas Instruments first introduced hand held digital calculators? The calculators could only perform the most basic functions; addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Yet in the early 1970s to purchase one set you back over $100. Today, for the same inflation adjusted dollars you can instead buy a desktop computer with more […]
Each profession has its own language. Computer geeks know what a “binary digit” is, while us layman over the age of forty have no clue. When my doctor was concerned about my “lipo-profile” I told him that I knew my nose was longish, but what did that have to do with anything?
Certainly there’s no […]
Today I’m going to tackle a most difficult subject - when a beneficiary of one’s estate has a dependency problem. The dependency may be related to alcohol, gambling or drugs (either prescription or illegal). The issue when one has a spouse, child or grandchild who struggles with these problems is how to deal with them […]
When my oldest daughter Gabi was just two years old, I knew that she had a bit of my tax lawyer instincts to find loopholes in the law. Gabi wanted to eat a small muffin while watching one of her favorite television shows. The tiled kitchen floor was adjacent to the living room and television, […]
During professional conversations with clients, I often ask them to describe the most important thing that they can leave to their children and grandchildren. “Money?” I’ll ask.
“No,” a typical client will respond, “They can blow the money or do foolish things with it. I don’t think that the money means a whole lot when you […]
Despite our rough economy, Lee County grew by more than 20,000 residents last year, the largest increase of any county in Florida. Many of these new residents are actually people who owned vacation homes here, but are now retired or semi-retired. Since they no longer have occupations “back home” they can now declare Florida as […]
Many people visit with their attorney, prepare their estate planning documents only to shove them into a drawer and forget about them. Since the trust code changes, the tax code changes, along with fluctuations in family and financial circumstances, prudent measures require a review of your estate plan every so often.
With the arrival of Revocable […]
I spent the third week of January in Orlando at the University of Miami’s Heckerling Estate Planning Conference. This is a top national conference covering estate planning topics, where you will find many eminent attorneys both lecturing and attending. Topics include what’s new in the tax laws, IRS challenges and court cases, and what planning […]