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teleice@TrustsAndEstates.net

Clicking the Iceberg Will Always Take You Home.

One of the purposes for publishing this site was to make my articles available in a central location. I have a ways to go before this site will be finished, but for the time being I am posting a few documents. I expressly retain my copyright.

I am not intending to give legal advice by making these materials available. Legal advice would require an intimate knowledge of a person's individual circumstances, and a tailoring of that legal knowledge to those circumstances. These materials are being offered for free, and although I hope they will be useful to you, they are not to be relied upon. If you want specific legal advice, you should consult, and pay, a lawyer.

Note that I have in most cases posted most of the articles in a variety of formats (e.g., Word, RTF, PDF, HTM, etc.). Everyone e should be able to open the HTM versions without leaving the browser. I use Word 2000, so that version should be the same as what I use in my office. However, I can generally find no difference between the Word 2000 and the RTF versions, the the RTF format will usually open flawlessly in either Word (all versions) or WordPerfect. The PDF version requires that you have the free Adobe Reader. However, Word 2000 does such a good job of converting to HTM that I am beginning to see less and less reason for taking the trouble to convert to PDF. Besides Adobe Acrobat either cannot handle longer documents or or does not handle them very well. My recommendation is to view the documents on screen using the HTM version If you want to download a copy for use in your office, and if you have Word 2000, and if I have posted a Word version, you should use Word as your download format of choice. Otherwise, download the RTF version and open it in any version of either Word or WordPerfect.

Since most of us have T-1 lines or the equivalent, I am not as concerned with compressing the documents as I used to be. However, in a few cases, with some of the longer documents, I have used a self-executing zip format to save you time downloading. For example, on the Distribution Treatise, which is now broken up into 15 or so segments to control its size, I packaged all of the documents into one self-executing zip file, that will unzip itself when you double click on it after downloading. You will be presented with a dialog box telling you where to put the unzipped document(s). Be sure to pay attention to it.

My treatise on Estate Planning for IRAs and Qualified Plan Distributions is now on a separate page. If you want to go to it now, click on the blue button.	Press Blue Button To Go To Treatise
My series of "Nutshell" and other simple guides for the layperson, as well as for the lawyer, C.P.A. and financial planner have been moved to a separate page, for your convenience. If you want to go there now, click on the red button. The following articles, and perhaps a few more, are located on the page you will go to if you press the red button.	Press Red Button To Go To Guides
Memo on Estate Planning Techniques and Costs, covering basic, intermediate and advanced techniques. Community Property Law in a Nutshell. Claims Guide For the Independent Executor. What You Should Know About Your Familiarly Limited Partnership. A Short List of Basic Post Mortem Estate Planning Elections. ***The Minimum Distribution Rules in a Nutshell (in 12 easy pages). This article could definitely benefit the CPA, Financial Planner and Layperson, As Well as Most Lawyers.

GRATs. Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts	This is a fairly comprehensive memo, in question and answer table form, discussing the what is perhaps the hottest estate planning technique on the market for safely transferring what could be an unlimited amount of property without paying any transfer tax. The memo is broken down into a BASIC and a TECHNICAL section. The BASIC section should be of value to the layperson, while the TECHNICAL section will perhaps only be useful to the tax professional. Versions of the article have been used in the Texas Tax Lawyer and as a handout for the 2003 NYU Tax Institute in San Francisco.
More on GRATs	This is a very different article from the one above, but it too is very comprehensive. It was co-authored with Carlyn McCaffrey and Richard Oshins.
Drafting for Income Tax Issues in Estates and Trusts	I prepared this article for the 2003 Advanced Drafting (Estate Planning and Probate Course) sponsored by the State Bar of Texas Professional Development Program in 2003.
Annotated Will & Revocable Living Trust	This is an updated version of a comprehensive (and complicated) form of Will with Revocable Living Trust, similar to the one given at the State Bar of Texas 1997 Advanced Tax Law Institute, & more recently given in November 1998 to the SBT Advanced Drafting: Estate Planning & Probate Law Course
	A brief article "Computers Fin de Millennium