Author Archive

Authored by: Dorothy J. Santos
A recent amendment to New York’s renunciation statute provides a new estate tax planning opportunity to owners of certain types of joint property.  A renunciation (or disclaimer) generally refers to the process of giving up an interest in another person’s property.  Renunciations are often used in the estate tax planning context [...]

 Authored by: Neeli Shah
Loans among family members, especially from parents to children, have recently become a more popular estate planning strategy due to the current low interest rate environment, which makes intra-family loans a valuable tool for both lenders and borrowers.  Lenders won’t have large amounts of taxable interest income to report, and borrowers may [...]

Authored by: Dorothy J. Santos
A recent amendment to New York law gives more Trustees the ability to fix or otherwise change the terms of a trust.  Specifically, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently signed a bill amending Section 10-6.6(b) of the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law, commonly referred to as New York’s “decanting” statute.  In this [...]

Authored by: Dorothy J. Santos
In our last post, RAINBOW GETS ITS POT OF GOLD, we discussed the likely effect of New York’s new Marriage Equality Act on the state’s estate tax law as it applies to same-sex married couples.  At the time the new law became effective on July 24, 2011, it was clear to [...]

Authored by: Dorothy J. Santos
Although New York is not the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, it is the largest state to confer these rights.  New York’s same-sex marriage law will not only change the day-to-day lives of same-sex couples in New York but will also likely fuel the gay-rights movement given the state’s size [...]

Authored by: Neeli Shah
Watch out, you may be subject to gift tax.
The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) is paying significant attention to certain tax-exempt entities organized under Sec. 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”) and the donors who contribute to these tax-exempt organizations. The recent Supreme Court case, Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 [...]

Authored by: Roy P. Kozupsky, Esq.
It is always interesting to follow important trends in how affluent families think about their wealth and plan for how it is transferred to the next generation. Thus, a recent study by U.S. Trust* is important to take note of.  The nationwide survey studied 450 affluent families with $3 million [...]

Authored by: Neeli Shah
 OVERVIEW
On February 8, 2011, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) announced a new voluntary disclosure initiative designed to bring additional taxpayers back into compliance and offshore funds back into the United States tax system.  The IRS’s new program, formally titled the “2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative” (“2011 OVDI”), which has a deadline [...]

Authored by: Dorothy J. Santos
In order for a person to contest a Will in New York, he or she must have grounds – that is, a reason based in the law that the Will is invalid and should not be admitted to probate.  The most common grounds for challenging a Will are improper execution, lack [...]

Authored by: Neeli Shah
In two recent Tax Court cases, the Tax Court agreed with the IRS and included the decedents’ interest in certain real property (that the decedents thought they had transferred during life) in their respective gross estates.  This illustrates that taxpayers have not fully understood and embraced the concept that “you cannot hold [...]