Dear Clients, Friends and Colleagues:   Not long ago a local father called me in a panic. His son was driving a friend to college. They had gotten into a car crash, and the son was in a coma in another state. The hospital was telling him that decisions needed to be made about the […]

We encounter a lot of confusion about the federal gift tax rules. Anyone can give anyone else up to $14,000 per year without needing to file a gift tax return. This means a married couple can give another married couple up to $56,000 in 2013 without filing a return. But if you need or want […]

Finally, the long-awaited fall bluefish run has arrived! Here’s a picture of Captain Ed Eastman with one of the nice blues we hooked into Friday off the New Hampshire coast. Thanks again to Joe O’Keefe for taking us out. Firm Update An issue we run into commonly is failure of clients to update their estate plans […]

This morning I awoke at twenty to three, as sometimes happens when, unable to keep my eyes open after dinner, I fall asleep before nine. Walking outside onto my porch, I looked up and saw Orion rising in the east. “Hello, my old friend,” I said – imagining my hunting companion returning from his summertime […]

Married couples who had estate plans done in the 1990s and 2000s were usually given two trusts. These trust plans, called “credit shelter,” “bypass,” or simply “A-B” trusts, were designed to maximize the individual exemption from the Federal (and in Massachusetts, the State) estate tax. Now that Congress has raised the estate tax floor for couples to $10.5 million, these trusts are […]