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 2022 Biden Estate Tax Cliff: Preparing After the 1/1/2013 and 1/1/2021 Cliffs
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) If you are an estate planner, you likely had your best revenue ever in 2012. Then you likely annihilated your previous revenue record in 2020. This happened because of the so-called “fear of missing out” with different tax “cliffs” expected to occur at the end of those two years, thereby causing a commotion among the wealthy. JANUARY 1, 2013 FISCAL CLIFF Rewind back to the year 2012. President Obama was in office and the $5 million estate and gift tax exemption was scheduled to expire and roll back to only $1 million at…