Whether it be a family member, trusted friend, or professional advisor, whom you pick as a trustee matters. An ideal trustee will follow through on the objectives outlined during your lifetime, your spouse’s lifetime, and through the trust’s ultimate disposition. When choosing the right trustee, it is important to explore the key criter...
Each decade of life brings unique challenges and opportunities, financial and otherwise. Focusing on each stage from the 40s to the 70s, we highlight the planning issues that may be ripe for your consideration, including revisiting your estate plan, downsizing your home, and constructing your general retirement plan.
Markets are hitting new highs justified by strong earnings growth and reasonably solid economic performance in this tenth year of the expansion. Absent the traditional economic warning signs, equity markets are exhibiting some unnatural distortions. The stock market is becoming quite concentrated in a select group of growth names, and investors app...
Three converging trends—including a shift from negative to positive screening—are making it easier for investors to implement impact investment programs that deliver competitive returns. For families and trust beneficiaries who are interested in impact investing, they can find that it may work in an irrevocable trust under the Unif...
When it comes to protecting digital assets, the users can end up being the biggest flaw in your cybersecurity armor. Mistakes like creating easy-to-guess passwords, not encrypting important data, or sending passwords over email can make a hacker’s job easy. To help strengthen your cybersecurity armor and stay ahead of the hackers, here are so...
When you make more money than your friends, it can set up awkward and uncomfortable money dilemmas. However, there are ways to get around them by having a few good verbal comebacks and a dose of niceness to help you sidestep a lot of cringe-worthy money situations.
Artwork, along with other types of assets, can be used as collateral for a loan to purchase property, invest in a business, or to buy more art. There are no limitations on the use of the proceeds. But before enlisting your art collection and other high-value assets to help secure the financing for a big purchase, there are a few things to consider,...
The importance of connecting with your children, whether they are ten years old or sixty years old, never diminishes. The investment you make in them comes back ten-fold in the family office setting and in innumerable, intangible ways in your life with them. A filmmaker translates her right-brain know-how to a left-brain playing field—the tax...
Developing markets face growing risks that present a clear and present danger to middle market firms embedded in those economies. Differentials in rate policy between the U.S. central bank and its foreign counterparts, an appreciating greenback, along with an atypical late business cycle fiscal boost, present the major driving forces in interest ra...
Incentive trusts are typically defined as trusts with provisions to encourage or discourage certain types of behavior and promote family values. Despite their appeal, they remain underutilized. One of the key reasons for this is that they’re somewhat impractical when used with traditional types of trust administration. Rather than relying on ...
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “Act”) brought extensive changes and a need to contemplate the doubling of the federal exemption from $5.6 million to $11.2 million for the estate, gift and GST taxes, along with planning for the sunset of the increased exemption amounts on December 31, 2025. Planners should also factor in the Fede...
Women continue to make great strides in wealth. However, a general theme emerges across research revealing women are still restricted by their own lack of confidence in terms of financial knowledge and the approach to investments, risk, and their role in a business. Given that most women will have sole responsibility for their wealth at some point ...
As the office of the controller becomes ever more strategic—creating higher levels of financial visibility to help drive growth and profitability—the financial organization’s relationship to the controller role must evolve as well. Specifically, today’s CFO needs to work closely with the controller to ensure that, one, the o...
Industry 4.0—synonymous with smart technologies—is driving efficiencies and increasing productivity. Data, and the physical-digital integration of humans, processes, systems, and machines, are key components of this transformation. The global ramifications of Industry 4.0 are still under debate, but one thing is certain: Change is comin...
The benefits of the U.S. 2017 tax reform act (the Act) should be broadly felt by Americans, and businesses large and small will see tax relief. The Act contains elements important for stronger economic growth—a competitive corporate tax rate and a move toward a territorial system of international taxation. At the same time, the House and Sena...