Adler & Adler Blog

A trust arrangement popular among well-to-do families concerned not only with their children’s financial security, but with the children’s behavior, is the so-called “incentive trust.” In general, the right of a trust beneficiary to receive certain financial benefits from the trust is expressly conditioned upon the beneficiary’s performing or achieving a defined objective, or refraining…

A “disclaimer” is a formal refusal by a donee of property (by gift or by will) to accept the gratuitous transfer. Though seemingly an unusual event, disclaimers are actually quite common, for a variety of reasons. For example, a wealthy widow who has no need for the additional property willed by her deceased husband may…

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for retirement plans and certain health plans in the private sector. The objective of ERISA is to protect the rights of individual plan participants. ERISA requires plans to provide participants with plan information including important information about plan…

There are two kinds of taxes potentially owed by an estate: One on the transfer of assets from the decedent (the person who died) to their beneficiaries (the estate tax), and another on income generated by the assets held by the decedent’s estate (the income tax). This post discusses when an estate is required to…

Under Section 2503(e) of the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”), tuition payments made directly to an educational organization on behalf of a person, and payments for a person’s medical care made directly to the provider are not treated as taxable gifts. For example, grandparents who already take full advantage of the annual exclusion for gifts…

The Surrogate’s Court is the court in New York where all matters relating to Wills and Trusts are determined. The Surrogate is the title of the judge in this particular court, and each county in New York has at least one Surrogate (New York County, covering Manhattan, has two). The Surrogate’s Court handles, among other…

It is the Executor’s responsibility to locate all of the decedent’s assets, pay the taxes on them, if any, and distribute them to the people named as beneficiaries in the Will. Estate assets include bank accounts, 401(k) plans, IRAs, pension plans, stocks, bonds, brokerage accounts, real estate, co-ops, partnership interests, intellectual property, life insurance, social…

Beginning May 13, only individuals with tax identification numbers… either a Social Security number (SSN) or an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) may request an employer identification number (EIN). This new requirement, recently announced by the IRS, will provide greater security to the EIN process by requiring an individual to be the responsible party and…

Although the charitable remainder trust offers considerable potential tax advantages that can reduce the effective cost of charitable giving, the fact remains that a portion of the donor’s wealth will be going to charity and not to the donor’s heirs. This represents an obviously significant dilemma for a charitably inclined individual making estate planning decisions.…

In some cases, a lifetime gift is inappropriate, either because of the size of the prospective donor’s estate, the donor’s age, or the nature of the estate assets. It is important, therefore, to consider whether large gifts are contraindicated. Size of Estate an Important Factor Examples one sees of lifetime gifts commonly involve people of…