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…

5 Commonly Overlooked Uses of Life Insurance

By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Now that estate taxes apply to less than 0.2% of Americans, I have had life insurance agents (as well as financial planners, CPAs, and attorneys) ask me whether there’s any need for life insurance anymore in clients’ planning, beyond the still standard needs for replacing the income of a head of household or funding a business partner buy-sell agreement. Over my 40+ years of experience in advising clients on estate, tax, and financial planning, I have seen and utilized…

Heckerling 2023 Reports from the ABA

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. The 2023 Heckerling Institute was held in-person in Orlando on January 9-13 and marked the conference’s 57th year.  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 Bar Association…

Life Settlements Can Increase Policy’s Worth

By Richard E. Nottingham CLU, ChFC Recently, I helped a client sell a no-longer-needed life insurance policy for far more than its cash surrender value. The policy’s cash surrender value was $61,000. Instead, via life settlement, they received a check for $540,000. A life settlement is a transaction involving the sale of an existing life insurance policy by the policy’s owner to a life settlement company. The result of this strategy can net the policy owner a sum many times greater than the policy’s cash value and provide the policy owner substantially more than the total premiums paid for the…

The SECURE Act: Everything You Need to Know (and How to Advise Your Clients!)

On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed a spending bill which had attached to it a piece of legislation that much of the estate, tax and financial world has been anxiously awaiting for an update on called the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019” (or “SECURE Act”). The SECURE Act went into effect January 1st, 2020 and is set to dramatically impact retirement planning for you and your clients! As many are aware, the most important provision of the SECURE Act to impact our clients and the planning we do for them includes the elimination of…

ABA Heckerling Reports from the 2018 Heckerling Institute

For the past 19 years, the American Bar Association Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law with the permission of the University of Miami School of Law, releases several extensive reports highlighting the various lectures and proceedings of the Heckerling Institute, one of the nation’s largest estate planning conferences, held every year in January. This past January 2018, marked the 52nd Annual Heckerling Institute.  To view, download and access these extensive reports, please click here to visit the ABA’s website. Further, at the above website, you can also access reports from prior Heckerling Institutes as well. We, at The…

7 of the Most Common Life Settlement Situations

By Daxton Fryer, Senior Life Settlement Broker A life settlement can be a great alternative to accepting the insurance company’s surrender value, if any, for a policy that is about to be lapsed or surrendered. While there are many reasons a policy may be terminated, certain scenarios are the most common. Keeping an eye out for these situations is one more way for you to help your clients. 1. The sale of a business or other illiquid asset.   A policy bought for a buy-sell agreement or estate liquidity may become unnecessary. Compounding the problem is that the business was typically paying for…

Getting It Right the First Time

By Jason Oshins, Financial Advisor, MBA This article tells the unlikely account of a second chance and presents a framework for making sure protection is airtight. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The whistle blows. At the count of “two”, my 9-year old son, Spence, kicks the soccer ball, and just as the whistle is blown, he’s on the ground writhing in pain. I sprint onto the field to comfort him. He says he can’t feel his wrist and can’t move his hand. Rewind to exactly one week before. I’ve been on the phone with his healthcare provider for over an…

ABA Heckerling Reports from the 2016 Heckerling Institute

For the past 17 years, the American Bar Association Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law with the permission of the University of Miami School of Law, releases several extensive reports highlighting the various lectures and proceedings of the Heckerling Institute, one of the nation’s largest estate planning conferences, held every year in January. This past January 2016, marked the 50th Annual Heckerling Institute.  To view, download and access these extensive reports, please click here to visit the ABA’s website. Further, at the above website, you can also access reports from prior Heckerling Institutes as well. We, at The…

Creating Your List – Things to Talk About With Your Clients in 2015

It happens to all of us. We go to a wonderful conference; we see a great webinar; we read an important article – and then we plan to change the conversation with referral sources and clients. So, when the inevitable challenges of our personal and professional reality comes in, we end up singing the same old songs of wealth, estate tax, financial, and asset protection planning – thinking months later, where did the change in conversation go? Successful practitioners explain to us that the way their practice found stability and growth was through finding planning that they could execute on,…