By Michael W. Halloran, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU® Whether owned in a revocable or irrevocable trust, many practitioners have used life insurance over the years. Depending upon the type of policy as well as current economic conditions, some problems could arise with many existing Trust Owned Life Insurance (TOLI) policies. The majority of problems with TOLI policies lie in irrevocable trusts. Many times the trustee places the policy in the trust without checking with the company to see if the policy is sustainable for the intended purpose of the trust. The coverage needs to stay in-force until the death of…
Beneficiary Designation Problems with IRAs: More Than Just the RMD Rules!
By Kristen M. Lynch, J.D., AEP, CISP, CTFA with Robert S. Keebler, CPA, MST, AEP (Distinguished) In the world of estate and retirement planning, I have been fortunate enough to have been cross-trained as both a trust officer and an attorney. As a trust officer, I was charged with being the divisional manager and administrator for all of the IRAs within a large regional bank’s trust department. In that role, I was responsible for ensuring that the bank’s IRA clients took their required minimum distributions (“RMD’s”), coordinated estate planning and post-mortem issues with the IRA client’s legal and tax…
How “Electronically” Organized Are You?
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach In last month’s newsletter, we discussed the top tips to get yourself more organized in your office space and through your daily workload, but your organization isn’t just about what’s on the outside. How about your electronic files on the computer? If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes looking for a file or trying to find an e-mail to respond to, then you might not be as electronically organized as you should be in order to be an effective and efficient assistant. As a follow-up to last month’s article, here are some tips about…
The Supreme Court Overturns DOMA
In a landmark ruling, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by bipartisan majorities and signed by President Bill Clinton. They found it to be an unconstitutional violation of the Fifth Amendment. We are holding a special 60-minute teleconference with renowned CPA, Robert S. Keebler, on Tuesday, July 9th at 9am Pacific (12pm Eastern) on this topic. For more information, click here. Also, with permission by and courtesy of Leimberg Information Services, Inc. (LISI) (for information about how to subscribe to LISI, click here), Bob Keebler did a 60-Second Planner…
Successful Exiting for Auto Dealers: Strategic Use of the Full Estate Planning Toolkit in a Consolidating Market
Reproduced with the expressed written consent and permission from Robert L. Moshman, Esq., author of the The Estate Analyst. To contact Bob Moshman to be included on his distribution list of his monthly newsletter, e-mail Bob at bmoshman@optonline.net. There are great planning possibilities for owners of automobile dealerships to maintain control, protect assets from creditors, select domiciles, employ trusts, provide advanced succession planning, and engage in serious opportunity shifting. Unfortunately, the stereotypical dealership owner will ignore almost all of this advice and do some last-minute planning instead. Sadly, this will not be sufficient and will shortchange the heirs, the employees,…
The Hybrid Domestic Asset Protection Trust
Featured in the American Bar Association’s Real Property Trust & Estate Law June eReport today, was this article about the Hybrid Domestic Asset Protection Trust (also known as the “Hybrid DAPT”) authored by nationally renowned estate and asset protection planning attorney, Steven J. Oshins, J.D., AEP (Distinguished). Background Asset protection has become one of the hottest areas of law and has become the ideal complement to estate planning. Consequently, the Domestic Asset Protection Trust (“DAPT”) has become one of the most popular asset protection tools in the planner’s toolbox. As more states have enacted DAPT legislation, practitioners have started doing…
The Next “Ultimate Level” 2-Day Attorney Training Announced
REDONDO BEACH, CA—The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc. is pleased to announce the dates for its next and third 2 and a half-day practice-building attorney training program, “The Ultimate LevelSM”. The next Ultimate Level program will be held on Thursday, October 3rd through Saturday, October 5th in beautiful, sunny Redondo Beach, California. It will feature a tour of Mr. Kavesh’s law firm, Kavesh, Minor & Otis and this time will be limited to fifteen select attorneys (and their key staff members and associates). Interested in taking YOUR practice to the “ultimate level”? If so, call us at 1-866-754-6477 for more information…
Five Simple Tips for Being a More Organized Assistant
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Being an organized assistant is important when supporting a busy professional advisor or attorney, especially one that may be meeting with multiple clients and managing multiple projects and priorities (like most professionals are doing). Organization isn’t just about how your office looks, but it is also how you manage yourself and ultimately what can become your thoughts and actions. However, sometimes just the act of organizing your surrounding environment is enough to help organize some of the rest of your chaos. Staying organized with your paperwork, your desk or office space and your to-do…
Advise Clients to “Shift” Opportunities Rather than Grab It Themselves
By Jeremy Spackman, Esq. Opportunity Shifting is a technique where a client’s parent, grandparent or other person sets up a beneficiary controlled Dynasty Trust for the benefit of the client and the client’s descendants. The client, as trustee of the Dynasty Trust, uses the gift made by the parent or grandparent to invest in a hot business or investment opportunity inside the Dynasty Trust, thereby protecting the opportunity from estate taxes, creditors and divorcing spouses for the duration of the trust. BENEFICIARY CONTROLLED DYNASTY TRUST Before explaining the steps involved in an opportunity shifting transaction, it is important to understand a beneficiary…
“Contextualizing” Life Insurance
By Jason Oshins, Financial Advisor, MBA Context is everything, and an important component of a financial advisor’s job is to contextualize the decision-making process to enable clients to make more effective decisions with a greater likelihood of long-term success. When planning for a couple’s retirement, I frequently begin by reviewing a life expectancy chart, emphasizing two components: (1) the potential gap between the first and second deaths and (2) the potential length of time before the second death is likely to occur. Assuming a healthy 40-something couple, the gap can be 10, 15, or 20 years, if not more, and…