Author: Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University - Newark

When Michael Jackson died in 2009,his fairly straightforward 5-page will left everything he owned to a family trust – an estate planning technique for giving away property that allows for privacy. The trust benefits Jackson’s three children and his mother, but nearly two decades later, Jackson’s estate, now worth an estimated US$2 billion, still hasn’t […]

Lawyers often tell their clients that everyone should have a will that clearly states who should inherit their assets after they die. But even having a will is not necessarily enough to avoid a costly and contentious legal dispute. Consider what happened after Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at the age of 76 in […]

Nothing is more certain than death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin famously declared. And, since 1916, the federal government has imposed an estate tax on the transfer of property owned at death. But the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers may be on the verge of changing all that. GOP legislators are now considering a massive bill […]