Wealth Strategies Journal:  “The King of Pop's mortal life has ended with debts in excess of $500 million but the value of his immortalized image could mean an immensely valuable future estate.  What can the estate-planning profession learn from the Michael Jackson estate? What kind of testamentary document was used? Was the trust well designed? How will intellectual properties be managed? What executor will preside over the Michael Jackson estate?”

Wealth Strategies Journal:  “Irrevocable life insurance trusts (‘ILITs') are commonly used to keep insurance proceeds outside the estates of the grantor-insured, the grantor's spouse, and the grantor's descendants (if a generation-skipping trust is used). As the name indicates, an ILIT is irrevocable and its terms cannot be amended after it is created. The irrevocability of an ILIT can create problems for grantors and their attorneys alike. For example, perhaps the ILIT is not a generation-skipping trust and the grantor now wishes to leverage his/her GST exemption with the policy or policies owned by the trust. Or maybe the grantor no longer wishes to provide for one or more of the beneficiaries of the ILIT, or desires to change the dispositive terms of the trust. So

Los Angeles Times:  “Anna Nicole Smith spent the last days of her life drifting in and out of consciousness under the pale blue comforter of a king-sized hotel bed, too weak to walk, sit up or drink from anything other than a baby bottle, according to court testimony today.  The description of the period preceding the supermodel’s 2007 death from a combination of sedatives and other drugs came on the opening day of a hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try three people for conspiring to illegally furnish Smith with prescription medications.”

Wall St. Journal:  “Bankruptcy cases generally don’t involve bitter divorces, complaints about mistresses and boy-toys, multiple homes, Rolexes, furs, expensive cars and plastic surgery.  . . [Denny] Hecker is in the middle of a particularly contentious liquidation of his personal assets as a result of the collapse of his business empire.  The former owner of 26 auto dealerships, the Advantage Rent-A-Car chain and other businesses is simultaneously going through a nasty divorce battle with estranged wife Tamitha Hecker . . . . a state district court judge has ordered Denny Hecker to explain just how he’s been able to burn through a minimum of $25,000 a month while calling himself bankrupt and unemployed.”

The Ohio Supreme Court imposed a $6,387,990 civil penalty against two companies and their owners for engaging in the unauthorized practice of law in Ohio. [T]he Court found that American Family Prepaid Legal Corporation and Heritage Marketing and Insurance Services Inc., their co-owners, Jeffrey and Stanley Norman, and multiple employees of those firms engaged in more than 3,800 acts of unauthorized law practice by virtue of their participation in a “trust mill” operation from March 2003 through March 2005. The Court noted that despite the fact that American Family used sales persons who had never been licensed as attorneys to “advise” customers about their estate planning needs and persuade them to purchase a trust, and that other non-attorneys in California actually prepared the trust documents,

The Trust Advisor Blog:  “Leading Trust Companies and Multi-Family Office Providers will Soon be Staffed with Advisors Trained in Family Formation Matters.  The role of a trustee is expanding. Trusts are evolving to harness medical advances. With the use of stem cells and other genetic material babies born today are expected to live over 100 years.  As part of this evolution, new state laws now make extracting live sperm from a dead body for later reproductive use legal.  Cryobanks around the country are receiving customer deposits of frozen reproductive cells which include stem cells, cord blood, sperm, eggs and embryos.  The courts have held that genetic material is property, like securities and may be bought, sold or transferred.”

Attorneys Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Alvina H. Lo wrote an article on the date on which an estate must value the assets of the estate for the purpose of determining the federal tax on the estate. “The alternate valuation rules in Section 2032 can alleviate the hardship that a decedent's estate may experience as a result of a decrease in the value of the gross estate from the date of the decedent's death to the date on which estate tax has to be paid. These rules permit an executor to elect to value the gross estate, as a general matter, six months after the decedent's death provided that both the value of the gross estate and the federal estate tax (and certain generation-skipping transfer (GST)

Wall St. Journal:  “Inherited IRAs don't work like regular IRAs.  If you inherit an IRA from anyone other than your husband or wife, you can't roll it into your own IRA.  And you can't consolidate IRAs you inherit from different people into one account.”

Fox10TV.com:  “Melanie Billings appears to have covered her tracks with a will. But attorneys say it's not valid.   The last will and testament of Melanie Billings was placed on file this week, at the Escambia County Probate Office. Attorneys for the family said Byrd didn't even leave behind a will. . . . But the family's attorney, Kramer Litvak, says the court doesn't have the power to honor Melanie's requests.”

Professor Bridget J. Crawford of the Pace University School of Law and Professor Mitchell Gans of Hofstra University School of Law article focuses on the federal estate and gift tax treatment of copyright termination rights. The right of a creative individual to terminate prior copyright transfers serves to protect against economic exploitation. Once a copyright’s value has been established in the marketplace, the author (or the author’s heirs) enjoy a ‘second look' at the gift, sale, license or other transfer of a copyright. But copyright termination rights – intended to enhance the economic well-being of authors and artists – undermine estate-planning strategies available to owners of other types of property. There is no policy justification for such discrimination, and so this article proposes legislative changes

Probate Lawyer Blog:  “The highly publicized estate battles of several deceased celebrities have cast a bright spotlight on the importance of having the proper estate planning. Although mega-rich celebrities seem to be affected overwhelmingly by these brutal family squabbles, the new book.  ‘Trial & Heirs: Famous Fortune Fights!‘ is designed to help every family, regardless of income level, avoid the financial pitfalls that drained bank accounts and created huge family rifts for the dozens of superstars profiled in the book.”

Wall St. Journal:  “Brooke Astor's 85-year-old son was convicted Thursday of exploiting his philanthropist mother's failing mind and helping himself to her nearly $200 million fortune.  Anthony Marshall now faces a mandatory jail sentence of at least one year — and perhaps as many as 25 years.  Jurors delivered their verdict on the 11th full day of deliberations, ending a five-month trial that revealed the New York society doyenne's sad decline. She was 105 and had Alzheimer's disease when she died in 2007.”

TMZ.com:  “Michael Crichton's widow just filed a creditor's claim against his estate … and she wants $7 million.”

Wall St. Journal:  “In the arcane netherworld of estate planning, thicketed with acronyms like SCINs, GRATs and IDGTs, and under the peculiar rules of the Internal Revenue Service, low interest rates enable you to transfer more wealth to your heirs tax-free. On top of that, you can buy an unusual bond specifically designed to protect your heirs from losing money if rates rise.  So, with yields near lows, now is the time to stop moaning about the lack of income and to start turning rock-bottom interest rates to your advantage.  If your children are about to borrow money and you think they are a good credit risk, you might wish to be their banker yourself.”

Baltimore Sun:  The newspaper reprints its 1849 obituary for the famous American poet and author Edgar Allen Poe.  The story also includes other news in the same newspaper issue.

University of Louisville – Louis D. Brandeis School of Law professor James T.R. Jones' article entitled “Body, Body, Who Gets the Body? The Resolution of Bodily Remains Cases” discusses fights over the remains of deceased people. What do celebrity Anna Nicole Smith; Godfather of Soul James Brown; baseball immortals Ted Williams and Kirby Puckett; artist Mark Rothko; some United States service members killed in the Iraq War; and even the Reverend and Mrs. Billy Graham have in common? All have been the objects of disputes over who controls final disposition of their mortal remains. Those, in turn, have brought into public scrutiny an ancient legal issue – who decides the place and method of disposal of the bodies of the dead. From antiquity, the law

The Probate Lawyer Blog:  “The will of the late Senator Edward Kennedy was filed with a Massachusetts probate court late last week, providing a peek behind the curtain of the famed Kennedy family.  Kennedy died on August 25, 2009, from brain cancer, at age 77.  He was survived by his wife of 17 years, Victoria, his three children, and two step-children.  Here is a copy of his will, courtesy of FOX TV in Boston:  Download Ted Kennedy's will.”

The Trust Advisor Blog:  “Nevada’s Financial Institutions Division, the state agency that supervises trust companies, and its Commissioner George E. Burns can celebrate a long fought victory for promoting major trust company regulatory reforms and carrying them through the legislature to the Governors’ desk.  The new law, Nevada Senate Bill SB-310, provides for $1 million in capital to be posted, a 330% increase in the requirement needed to license and maintain a retail trust company in the state.”

Americans love their pets.  Arizona and forty-one other states authorize the creation of a trust for the benefit of animals.  The purpose of a pet trust is to provide funds to pay for the care of pets after the death or disability of the trustmaker(s).  Pet trusts usually provide that when the last animal dies, the balance of the funds allocated to the pet trust goes to loved ones or to charity. I prepare pet trusts for my Arizona estate planning clients who want to insure that their pets are cared for.  Most of the time pet trusts are created as part of a revocable living trust.