The author reviews many of the recent cases involving the issue of equitable apportionment of estate taxes and urges states to adopt a bright-line approach to increase the application of equitable apportionment as the default rule

In Gerson, the Tax Court upheld the government's regulation regarding the grandfather exception to the generation-skipping transfer tax and held that the decedent's exercise of a general testamentary power of appointment in 2000, granted under a trust created by her husband at his death in 1973,...

It is somewhat difficult to anticipate when a court will reform a trust to conform to a testator's intent to qualify for the marital deduction. With this in mind, the author compares the recent Ninth Circuit case Davis to the recent Tax court opinion in Whiting

In this second article on the Fifth Circuit's opinion in McCord (the first is at http://ssrn.com/abstract=939538), the author discusses the gift tax reduction attributable to the donees' assumption of the donors'/decedents' potential section 2035 liability

This article discusses the recent Focardi Tax Court opinion that denies grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT) qualification for a grantor's retained interest with a revocable spousal interest contingent on both the grantor's death within the term and on the grantor's decision not to revoke his...

Last spring the IRS issued Rev. Proc. 2005-24, applicable to the qualification of inter vivos charitable remainder annuity trusts (CRATs) and charitable remainder unitrusts (CRUTs) when the surviving spouse can satisfy her statutory elective share from the assets of a charitable remainder trust...

This Article discusses Ithaca Trust and that case's emphasis on the integrity of actuarial tables for estate tax valuation purposes. The author argues that application of actuarial table values for estate tax valuation is the best means to value estates where use of tables is mandated, despite...