By Kristina Schneider Do you think seminars are dead? I keep reading a lot of articles and marketing pieces coming out of companies that are promoting other internet-based services that keep stating that seminars are dead and an antiquated and outdated way to market your estate planning services. I laugh only because I know of several law practices that are regularly bringing in consistent new clients in each month using seminars. First, I think it is important to be honest with ourselves about the differences between estate planning and other areas of law (such as divorce, personal injury, DUI, etc.). …
The Beneficiary Controlled Trust*
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) The Beneficiary Controlled Trust name was first introduced to the estate planning industry by my father and me in our two-part article, “Protecting & Preserving Wealth into the Next Millennium,” published in the September and October 1998 issues of Trusts & Estates magazine. [Portions of this article were taken from the 1998 article.] Since that time, the Beneficiary Controlled Trust concept has been widely used by estate planners all over the country. This article describes this philosophy. Background Most trust scriveners draft trusts that make mandatory distributions to the beneficiaries upon reaching certain…
7 Questions to Ask When Your Website Isn’t Working the Way You Want
By Foster Web Marketing If the website for your estate planning practice isn’t generating the leads and conversions you were expecting, it’s time to take a closer look at what could be going wrong. Your website is the hub of all your marketing efforts online. If it’s not doing its job effectively, you absolutely will struggle to connect with the potential perfect clients that are searching for you. The good news is that underperforming websites don’t just “happen.” There are usually cumulative, underlying issues impeding your ability to attract prospects—and those issues can be fixed! You just have to methodically…
What to Do When Everything is Urgent & Important?
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Too often for most people, there’s far too much to do and not enough time to do it. This requires a balancing act of figuring out how to prioritize your work. For most people, the work that gets set aside are the non-important, but also sadly, the non-urgent and important items. The things that you know you need to get to, but that don’t have a looming deadline to be met. Those tasks will constantly be backburnered into an oblivion, perhaps for eternity. We implement what is known as the “Urgent & Important” (or…
Steve Oshins Releases 10th Annual Non-Grantor Trust State Income Tax Chart
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) Different states have different rules as to what creates a “resident trust” that is subject to taxation in that state. States may tax a trust based on the residency of the settlor or testator, based on whether there is a resident trustee or beneficiary or whether there is administration in that state, or for a combination of these factors and/or other similar factors. So it isn’t as easy as simply situsing a trust in a state with no state income tax. You have to look at the state taxing statutes that may apply….
A Conversation About Perceived Value
By Melinda Merk, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, AEP® (Distinguished) This time of year, we tend to see an uptick in estate and trust administration and guardianship cases. All too often, we see situations where the deceased or incapacitated person did their estate planning on the cheap, did it themselves or, worst of all, did nothing. Unfortunately, their families and loved ones are now bearing the added cost and emotional burden of a court-supervised probate or guardianship proceeding and other unintended consequences, which could have been alleviated had the proper planning and documents been in place, working with an experienced estate…
Heckerling 2024 Reports from the ABA
The 2024 Heckerling Institute was held in-person (and virtually) in Orlando on January 8-12 and marked the conference’s 58th year. The Phillip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning is the nation’s premier conference for estate planning professionals, offering unparalleled educational and professional development opportunities for all members of the estate planning team. Over the course of the conference’s five days, numerous timely topics of interest to estate planners of all designations—including, but not limited to, attorneys, trust officers, accountants, charitable giving professionals, elder law specialists, wealth management professionals, and nonprofit advisors. As they have done for many years, the American…
Which Jurisdictions Are Best in 2024?
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) It often makes sense to situs clients’ trusts in a trust jurisdiction where there is no state income tax, where the trust assets are protected from creditors and divorcing spouses, where estate taxes can be avoided forever or close to forever, and where there is flexibility to make changes to irrevocable trusts that are otherwise protected. But which jurisdictions are best? The First Tier Two trust jurisdictions stand above the rest, Nevada and South Dakota. Although one can argue for one or the other as #1, there is absolutely no believable argument that…
5 Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2024
By Foster Web Marketing If you take a look back at 2023, you’ll see a lot of change over just 12 months. Google’s algorithms and analytics evolved dramatically. Online behavior and user preferences evolved, too. AI technology rapidly took center stage, and lots of law firms rose or fell based on how willing they were to embrace all the changes. Overall, I’d say it was a year full of seismic shifts in the ways that estate planners market and grow their practices online! And, looking ahead, 2024 promises to be another year of significant transformations. Of course, we all know…
8 Steps to Hiring a Great Executive Assistant
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach An executive assistant is an often overlooked position for many estate planning professionals. I know this because I often interact with a lot of attorneys, financial advisors, and CPAs directly on matters that I also know would be best handled by an executive assistant. Not having an executive assistant means that you, the executive, are often stuck with a lot of daily administrative tasks in the office. And that’s fine if that’s something that you enjoy doing and it works for you. But, for most estate planning professionals, that’s a huge misappropriation of the…