Category: Trusts
If the SCF represents a good cross section of the country (it really tries), that means that overall about 0.95 percent of Americans have a trust fund from their parents. Have you set up a trust fund for your kids? If not, you might think trusts don’t apply to your financial situation. But what if […]
JPMorgan Chase and Co. is being sued by a historical local church after the congregation reportedly lost millions. Christ Church Cathedral claims the investment banker’s mismanagement of two trust funds and self-dealing resulted in a $13 million loss from a trust donated by humanitarian Eli Lilly Jr., the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Can your trustee […]
The trial court held that the trustee of a perpetual charitable trust had breached the duty of prudence by investing the fund solely in bonds and awarded damages based on what the portfolio would have been worth had the trustee followed specific investment advice it had sought but ignored. What happens when trustees make poor […]
When the team’s owner died in March, crucial details of his wishes weren’t in a will, but in a trust agreement, which is not public information. Ever since Buffalo Bills founder Ralph Wilson, Jr. passed away, Bills fans have been unsure of their team’s future. Will the team stay in Buffalo? Unfortunately, Wilson never made […]
It’s not every day that financial advisers and accountants are called in to referee billion-dollar disputes over the ownership of a basketball team, but nevertheless there are plenty of valuable takeaways from the Sterlings’ duel in probate court. When Shelly Sterling removed her husband, Donald Sterling, as co-trustee of the family trust that owns the […]
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Lou Reed was the man who famously crooned, “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.” The late lead singer and guitarist of The Velvet Underground — and of course, a musician and songwriter with a successful, decades-long solo career — may have been a bit wild at […]
While the contemplation of your eventual demise is never at the top of anyone’s list, there is satisfaction from the feeling that you have taken care of issues and provided for those you love. But unwitting mistakes can wreck your careful planning and even lead to family fighting and estrangement of the very people you […]
This valuable estate-planning tool can help your beneficiaries make the most out of their inheritance but many investors do not know about these stretch provisions. This leaves retirees with the important question: Should they force their beneficiaries to stretch the inherited IRA? What is a “stretch IRA” strategy? A recent Forbes article titled “Should I […]
While minimizing taxes is certainly not the only, nor even the primary, objective of trusts, it is a major issue for trustees with a fiduciary responsibility. The variety of trusts and the rules surrounding them are many and can be complex. A recent CNBC.com article, titled “Estate planners shift gears in new tax environment,“ explains […]
Bill and Hillary Clinton are making headlines for their use of the qualified personal residence trust or QPRT — lovingly pronounced “kew-pert” by tax geeks — to save on estate and gift taxes. According to Bloomberg News, the Clintons drafted two (Qualified Personal Residence Trusts) QPRTs in 2010, divided the ownership of their Chappaqua, N.Y. home into […]
