While annuitizing a portion of a retirement account can reduce the account owner’s taxable required minimum distribution amount, there are still plenty of unanswered questions that require the IRS’s guidance in hopefully soon Temporary Regulations.

It is fair to say that there is not much awareness of Michigan’s antilapse statutes nor understanding of their broad application to Wills, trusts, and numerous other nonprobate governing instruments.

The anxiety caused by the SECURE Act 2.0 with regard to mandating Roth catch-up contributions just got a 2-year reprieve.

Discharge of indebtedness income often comes as a surprise to the debtor. It comes as an even bigger surprise to a single member LLC owner who was never obligated to repay the loan that was subsequently discharged.

Funding a stock or partnership buy-sell agreement with life insurance on the life of an owner may cause unexpected federal estate tax liability for a deceased owner’s estate.

Once required minimum distributions are ‘turned on’ they cannot be later ‘turned off’ by a successor beneficiary of a retirement account.

Trusts sometimes protect assets from being lost in the beneficiary’s divorce, other times the trust does not work so well as an asset protection device.

There is now a three year statute of limitations associated with the failure to take a required minimum distribution (RMD) from a retirement account.

Trusts for disabled or chronically ill beneficiaries can exploit the stretch distribution rules for retirement benefits made payable to the trust.

Often there is the temptation to rent one’s home for a short period of time, especially when there is a strong demand for housing for short period of time. The tax law favors such short-term rentals of a home, but as always there are limits to this opportunity.