Thank you to Stephan Worrall for sharing this Non Sequitor cartoon:
Click here for the Estate lawyer’s version of Little Red Riding Hood.
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Can beneficiaries sue the writer of a will?
For your clients who ask this question:
LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
When people you love die, you think you’ll need a long time to get over it. Reading the will may change your mind. If
Disinheritance and In Terrorem Clauses
We usually think of a person’s will as a financial document used to make sure his or her estate is distributed according to his or her wishes. The will can also be used as a constructive tool or a destructive weapon to reach other goals, which often do not involve money.
Eddy M. Elmer, in
Endowment 5% Spending Rule?
Check out The Debate Room at BusinessWeek.com
Colleges and universities should be required to spend 5% of their endowments every year or risk losing their tax-exempt status. Pro or con?
Challenges to University Tax Exemptions
Taxing authorities are increasingly challenging the tax-exempt status of nonprofits. More and more nonprofits look like businsses. They charge fees and sell products and services to raise money. As state and local govenrments face declining tax revenues, exempting these institutions from taxation makes less and less sense.
James D. Miller, an Economics professor from Smith
Make a Federal Case Out of It
Thanks to Vickie Lynn Marshall your next will contest may be in federal court. You probably know her as Anna Nicole Smith – the 1993 Playmate of the Year and TV reality show star who married oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall when he was 89 and she was 26 (let me help you with the