Reprinted from Leimberg Information Services, Inc.
January 8, 2019
“This newsletter is intended to provide clients with ideas how to enhance their planning in the new 2019 year. It can also be adapted and used by practitioners as a mailing or email to their clients to help encourage their clients to commit to undertake positive planning steps as part of their New Year’s resolutions.”
In their commentary, Martin Shenkman, Alan Gassman, Joy Matak and Lee Slavutin remind LISI members that New Year, 2019 can be the perfect time to revisit and improve your estate planning goals and personal protection from taxes, creditor exposure and other threats to you and your family.
Martin M. Shenkman, CPA, MBA, PFS, AEP, JD is an attorney in private practice in Fort Lee, New Jersey and New York City who concentrates on estate and closely held business planning, tax planning, and estate administration. He is the author of 42 books, more than 1,200 articles, and, is a Director for the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils.
Alan Gassman, JD, LL.M is the founding partner of the law firm of Gassman, Crotty & Denicolo, P.A. in Clearwater, Florida. Alan is a frequent contributor to LISI and has authored several books and many articles on Estate and Estate Tax Planning, Trust Planning, Creditor Protection Planning, and associated topics. Most recently, Alan is the coauthor of The Section 199A (and 1202) Handbook: The Advisor’s Guide to Saving Taxes on Business and Investment, with Brandon Ketron, Martin Shenkman, Jonathan Blattmachr and Robert Schenck.
Joy Matak, JD, LLM, is a principal at CohnReznick and Co-Leader of the Firm’s Trusts and Estates Practice. She has more than 20 years of diversified experience as a wealth transfer strategist with an extensive background in providing tax services to multi-generational wealth families, owners of closely-held businesses, and high-net-worth individuals and their trusts and estates. Joy provides clients with wealth transfer strategy planning to accomplish estate planning and business succession goals. She also performs tax compliance including gift tax, estate tax, and income tax returns for trusts and estates as well as consulting services related to generation skipping including transfer tax planning, asset protection, life insurance structuring, and post-mortem planning. Before joining CohnReznick, Joy was a senior tax manager at a Top 20 accounting firm. Early in her career, she was a principal in a Virginia-based law firm and also worked as a senior associate in the growing trusts and estates groups of one of the leading commercial law firms in New Jersey.
Lee J. Slavutin is a principal in Stern Slavutin, Inc., a life insurance and estate planning firm in New York. He graduated from Monash University Medical School in Melbourne, Australia in 1974 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia and a Diplomat of the American Board of Pathology in 1981. Dr. Slavutin left the practice of medicine in 1982 and entered the life insurance business in 1983. He is a member of the Association of Advanced Life Underwriting and the Million Dollar Round Table and is a Chartered Life Underwriter with the American College. Dr. Slavutin has published 170 articles on insurance and estate planning topics for CCH, Warren Gorham and Lamont, Practitioners Publishing Company (PPC), New York Law Journal and others. He is a member of the CCH Estate and Financial Planning Advisory Board, and the Advisory Panels of PPC and Bottom Line Personal. He is the Author of “PPC’s Guide to Life Insurance Strategies”, 19th edition (2017), published by Thomson Reuters. Dr. Slavutin has spoken before the American Law Institute/American Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers’ Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), the New Jersey State Society of CPAs, the Association of Advanced Life Underwriting, the Million Dollar Round Table, and the UJA-Federation Annual Tax and Estate Planning Conference, as well as many New York accounting and law firms. He was invited to testify before the New York State Senate on the effectiveness of the insurance rating firms and worked with the U.S. General Accounting Office on a similar project. He is married to Dee and they have two children, Aaron and Lydia. He can be contacted at ls@sternslavutin.com
Here is their commentary: