The world of estate planning and trust administration is fraught with a variety of landmines, and only the diligent can detect and avoid them consistently. An estate planning professional’s behavior and performance may be judged unethical or even illegal in a given circumstance even if he or she is exceptionally knowledgeable about the substantive law.…

It’s possible to have a superb estate plan in concept, including state-of-the-art estate planning documents, only to have defective fiduciary administration cause components of the plan to short circuit or, in some cases, cause the whole plan to explode in flames. The results may range from loss of expected tax status or benefits to diversion…

The current tax and estate planning environment requires particular attention to income tax issues that arise in formulating an efficient and effective estate plan as well as in trust and estate administration. Estate planning professionals need to have expertise not only in designing a plan that can minimize trust-level income taxes and achieve estate tax-free…

A large segment of the estate planning industry has evolved from focusing primarily on estate tax deferral and minimization to non-tax planning. Today, many clients whose estates used to be in the category of taxable are now concentrating more on other matters, such as not making their children too rich too soon, protection of assets…

As of August 2022, in the 20 years since Kansas became the first state to enact the Uniform Trust Code, 34 more states, plus the District of Columbia, have enacted it. Additionally, several states that have not enacted the UTC have adopted portions of it or have modeled some of their trust laws on it.…

Planning to avoid, or at least minimize, gift and estate taxes can be daunting. That statement has never been truer than it is in 2023. The IRS often challenges tax benefits claimed by taxpayers implementing new or revised estate planning techniques and strategies and sometimes even formulates new theories by which to undermine or eliminate…

Directed trusts, largely unknown in the United States just a few decades ago, are becoming quite common. Many states have adopted statutes to establish a framework for the operation of directed trusts, and courts are sometimes called upon to resolve messy disputes among trust protectors, Trustees and beneficiaries. We’ll discuss the unique drafting challenges, liability…