The article discusses Negron and the circuit split on the issue of whether to value non-assignable lottery payments in a decedent's estate by means of the actuarial tables or whether that value needs to be discounted for non-marketability

In Estate of Shapiro, the Ninth Circuit held that an individual had a valid palimony claim under Nevada state law. However, the issue was whether the decedent's estate qualified for a deduction for that claim under federal estate tax law

The Wandry decision extends the application of defined value clauses beyond those family limited partnership cases that transfer any excess value to a charity. In Wandry, the Tax Court reads Procter narrowly and ignores the fundamental rationale of Robinette

Ithaca Trust Co. v. United States, a section 2055 case, held that the annuity tables had to be used to value the life estate of decedent's wife, the non-charitable beneficiary, despite the death of his wife before the due date for filing the decedent's estate tax return. Since that opinion, some...

The 2001 Tax Act has markedly changed the purpose of the gift tax; no longer a backstop to the estate tax, its sole purpose is to prevent abuses of the income tax. As it stands, the retention of the gift tax with the repeal of the estate tax is rife with inconsistencies. Although the best...

It is this author's contention that Ithaca Trust holds that when valuation must be computed by actuarial methods, all facts, except for those necessary to use the tables, must be ignored. This requirement is so despite the fact that an actual facts-and-circumstances analysis would likely produce...

In Hendrix the Tax Court considered the issues of whether defined value clauses were the result of arm's-length transactions and whether they were void as against public policy. The underlying dispute was whether the taxpayers' transfers of the John H. Hendrix Co. stock were valued at fair...