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Clicking the Iceberg Will Always Take You Home.

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 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 html 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 does not handle them very well. My recommendation is to view the documents on screen using the html 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.

It may be the case that the document you download is not what it was supposed to be, or perhaps the link is broken and you can't download anything. If so, or if you are having any other problems with the site, please let me hear from you. Either call me at (817) 877-2885 or e-mail me at teleice@TrustsAndEstates.net. Again, please report any problems with the site to me.

Estate Planning For Distributions From Qualified Plans and IRAs	Comments	Push HTML Button To View in Your Browser The PDF format gives a near perfect reproduction. You will, however, need Adobe's FREE Acrobat Reader to view documents in PDF format. The free reader can be downloaded by clicking here. I am not using PDF as much as formerly, because it does not convert from large documents very well, and because MS Word does such a good job of converting to HTML that there very little point in using PDF.	Push the MS Word Button to download a Word 2000 version of a document.   A few of the documents may be zipped in a self-extracting format. To unzip it, simply click on it and pay attention to the location where the unzipped document will be found. The unzipped document can be directly opened with your word processor. Zipping the files decreases the transfer rate dramatically, and takes up less space on my web site. However, because T-1 lines and faster transfer rates are more generally available than formerly, I am now using the zipped format only for the very large files. You do not need to have WinZip to open a self-extracting archive, but if you are interested in purchasing WinZip, click below. Get WinZip.
This document has become too large to maintain for free, given the constant legislative and other changes to the field. Nevertheless, I do periodically update some of the chapters, particularly if I have cause to work on an issue I have covered before.   One of these days a publisher is going to tempt me into producing a commercial version of this outline, which will be kept current. In the meantime, I hope that the following materials, which are free after all, will still be of use to you.	I believe that the following materials fill a very small niche in the field. There are a number of good user friendly books and outlines out there. See my own paper, The Minimum Distribution Rules in a Nutshell. This work, however, is very technical, and I have tried very hard to support virtually every statement with a citation giving the authority for it. This is something I have found lacking in the more popular treatises, but I think that at some level the approach I have taken is valuable too, much more for the professional than for the layperson. In fact, this work will be largely useless to the latter, precisely because of its technical nature. The article may be helpful to the public, in order to give enough of a feel for the subject to appreciate the need for an attorney advisor. See Fees
Full Monty Version of the Entire Treatise	The entire 1000 page behemoth has been 20 years in the making. It can be downloaded as  one self-extracting archive.  It may be more convenient however  for you to read or download only the chapters you need, so I have broken the book down into 15 sections below.	If, you want the Full Monty version, all at once, in a self-extracting compressed format, just click on the pink button below. Note that this version is not as up to date as the individual chapters listed below.	.
		View in HTML or Adobe PDF To View a PDF file, simply double click on it. To download a PDF using IE, right click. To Download in Netscape, save as source.	Download in Word 2002 Push The Button and Download Will be Automatic
Article I. Important Preliminaries
Article II. Survivor Benefits Under the Retirement Equity Act	Article II discusses the joint and survivor annuity rules under REA and related topics.
Article III. Does the Nonemployee Spouse Have a Community Property Interest in the Participant's Qualified Plan or IRA That is Transferable By Will or Intestacy.	This article is primarily concerned with community property issues, which means these issues concern and effect $1 trillion (or so) in assets, if anyone is counting.
Article IV. A Decedent's Interest Under a Deferred Compensation Arrangement is Generally Not Subject to Administration Whether or Not it is a Probate Asset; and, in a Community Property State, Whether or Not the Decedent is the Participant or the Participant's Spouse.	Article IV discusses an (to me) interesting and often overlooked point. If an asset, such as the nonparticipant spouse's interest is subject to the control and management of the surviving spouse, how is it going to be administered, even if it is conceded that it is a probate asset. This may be a Texas only issue, I am not sure.
Article V Creditor Issues	Can a creditor reach an interest in a qualified plan or IRA? Read Article V and find out. It is short.
Article VI Transfer Tax Issues (Estate, Gift & GSTT)	This is an extensive and comprehensive article that is more or less exclusively concerned with estate and gift tax issues associated with the transfer of qualified plan and IRA interests. There are many thorny issues considered here, including the question of whether it is really necessary to comply with Rev. Rul. 89-89 in order to get a marital deduction for an IRA payable to a QTIP Trust.
Article VII Income Tax Issues	This is the longest chapter in the book. It covers lump sum distributions, the 691(c) deduction and IRD issues in general, rollovers and withholding, LIFE INSURANCE issues, allocation of employee contributions (a real bitch, that one; it doesn't come up often, but when it does . . .).  Also covered are issues concerning distributions of employer stock, including a discussion of how basis is computed.
Article VIII Excise Taxes	Excuse taxes include the 72(t) premature distribution tax, the 401(a)(9) minimum distribution rules (all you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask), disclaimers, trusts as beneficiaries, etc.
Article IX Beneficiary's Right to Control the Form & Timing of a Distribution.
Article X. In Service Distributions
Article XI Prohibited Transactions, Including Loans	The participant loan section is quite extensive.
Article XII Division of Qualified Plans and IRAs on Divorce	QDROs anyone?
Article XIII The Effect of Entering Into a Partition or other Marital Agreement That Purports to Affect an Interest in a Qualified Plan or IRA   [Not completed]
Article XIV What is an IRA Under State and Federal Law
Article XV Appendices An Anatomy of a Beneficiary Designation Form Misc. Forms Transfers Of Community Property In Qualified Plans and IRAs 1996 Legislative Changes	This is an hoary chapter, which I haven't visited in quite a while and which I have used to hold a number of various articles I have written that did not fit the format of the other provisions. Some of the stuff in here is now found elsewhere in updated form. It still may be worth a look.
ROTH IRAs-Click Me
Annotated Beneficiary Designation Form-Click Me	Where does the undistributed interest that a beneficiary of an IRA go when the beneficiary dies? Is the interest includable in the beneficiary's estate? Does it qualify for the marital deduction (why or why not)? Can the beneficiary choose a more rapid distribution than that elected by the participant during life? These and other mysteries are revealed here.
Annotated Trust Provisions Governing IRA and QP Benefits Payable to the Trust-Click Me