For those of you who believe that you can write a will just effectively as an attorney and save a lot of money I bring to you the latest case from California that points out how important it is to know all of the law surrounding estates and trusts. Not using an attorney well versed [...]
Brenda and Eddie decided to marry – each had a prior marriage that ended in divorce, and each had children from those prior marriages. Brenda and Eddie met and lived in the Chicago suburbs at the time. After fifteen blissfully wedded years, both retired from their respective jobs to move to Florida. Since they both [...]
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. I’ve attended this conference for the better part of twenty years and haven’t seen anything like what [...]
Since the tax law now allows us to more easily convert traditional IRA accounts into Roth IRAs – I’m frequently asked whether this is a good idea. While everyone’s situation is different which will lead to different conclusions, the approach one should take when deciding what might be in your best interest is the same. [...]
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 [...]