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E-mail me at
teleice@TrustsAndEstates.net
Clicking the Iceberg Will
Always Take You Home.
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WELCOME
TO THE
ESTATE PLANNING & PROBATE
HOMEPAGE OF
NOEL C. ICE
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RECENT
ACCOLADES
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For More See
Personal Bio
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I was recently listed among the "Top 100"
lawyers in Texas in the October 2004 edition of Texas Super Lawyers by
the Publishers of Texas Monthly and Law and Politics. Although I am
flattered and honored, there are a number of lawyers not on that list
whom I would have placed ahead of myself.
I was recently honored to appear in the Best
Lawyers in America book in three fields (1) Trusts and Estates, (2)
Tax Law, and (3) Employee Benefits Law, and in Best Lawyers: Employee
Benefits Law, September 2003 issue of Corporate Counsel, and am profiled in Texas Monthly Magazine as among the "Texas Super Lawyers,
2003" in the field of trusts and estates. (I was selected for employee
benefits as well, but elected to be listed under trusts and estates.) In
addition, in the Oct. 15, 2002 edition of the Texas Lawyer
Go-To-Guide, I was Listed as one of four "Top-Notch" lawyers in the
field of Trusts and Estates Law. I was also listed among the top five
Trusts, Estates & Probate Lawyers in Fort Worth, Texas magazine's Top
Attorney Guide, December 2002 (the one with the cover that says "Kill
all the Lawyers [Except for Mine]".
Noel C. Ice or this website,
www.trustsandestates.net, has been named in numerous legal
and financial planning periodicals and journals, including Forbes
Magazine, Medical Economics, Bloomberg Wealth Manager, Lawyers
Weekly U.S.A., Trusts and Estates, and Kiplinger Retirement
Report.
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Sans Beard
(not my real name)
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Message
Board -Est.
Planning w/ IRAs &
QPs
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This site was begun as a place to post some of the professional articles that I had written, so that I would
not have to respond to so many personal requests for a copy
of this or that. Over time, the purpose has grown, and I am
now attempting to make available some of my more accessible
articles and memos to the general public interested in
estate planning and IRA distribution issues. For these
people I have created a page where all of my "Nutshell" series of articles can be found. Lawyers, CPAs
and financial planners should also find this page to be of
interest.
Note that I have dozens of articles on this
site, close to 100; many are now out of date, and are thus no longer
accurate, and some never were. These articles are not legal advice
because they were not written for your reliance, nor are they
necessarily applicable to the facts of your case, if you have one.
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Avec
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Here are some popular new items:
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GRATs.
The grantor retained annuity trust is presently one of
the best estate planning techniques on the market. It allows
the grantor to convey an unlimited amount of property
without gift tax, and is expressly sanctioned by statute. I
recently wrote an article in question and answer table
form, a version of which were used at the New York
University 62nd Tax Institute and another version of which
was published in the Texas Tax Lawyer. A more recent
word version is available for downloading by clicking
GRATs\GRATMmClIce.doc.
The HTML version is available by clicking
GRATs\GRATMmClIce.htm.
I also co-authored an article on GRATs for NYU with Richard
Oshins and Carlyn McCaffrey. That article can be downloaded
by clicking GRATs\GRAT_NYU.doc.
The HTML version is available by clicking .
GRATs\GRAT_NYU.htm.
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Income
Tax Issues in Probate. I recently
prepared a paper for the State Bar of Texas' Advanced
Drafting: Estate Planning and Probate course. A more
recent word version is available for downloading by
clicking
DraftingForIncomeTax.doc. The HTML version is available
by clicking
DraftingForIncomeTax.htm.
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List
of Articles in Table Form. Unfinished.
I recognize that there is so much stuff on this site that
finding a particular article can take a while. Therefore, I
have begun a page that lists all of the articles on this
site, and where to find them. You can use "Control f" to
search the page using key words, and that should allow you
to find what you need. It is about 25% finished. Check it
out. Coming soon will be a find engine. It you have the
Alexa toolbar, which is free, you can search any site.
- Is trust income separate or community property? You
would think the answer is simple and well established. Think
again, and read
"Is The Trust Income
Community Property?"
- Ice on
EGTRRA and IRAs and Qualified Plans.
This, plus
Steve Akers article on EGTRRA
and Estate Planning, pretty much cover the
EGTRRA waterfront.
- THE Final
MRD Regs Annotated-Updated
9/12/2002 and a new
Nutshell Article on the MRD Rules
Under the Final Regs. I have even updated 4 or 5 chapters of
the
Estate
Planning For Distributions Treatise,
particularly Ch. 5 dealing with Creditor Issues
involving IRAs, SEPs and Qualified Plans.
- ENRON and ESOPs.
This is an article I prepared recently for the 2002 Advanced
Estate Planning Instituted Sponsored by the PDP of the State
Bar of Texas.
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FORM BOOK
(for attorneys only).
- Articles by
Mike Bourland, Shannon
Gutherie and Jeffrey Meyers
on Private Foundations, Charitable Lead Trusts and Private
Foundations, all on the new
Guest Page.
- Articles by
Thomas Baird
on FLPs and LLCs, and
Steve Akers
2003 on
Post-Mortem Administration and
EGTRRA,
all on the new
Guest Page.
- 100
(or so) Do's and Don'ts in Estate Planning For IRA and
Qualified Plan Distributions. (Only 10 pages!)
- Major
Improvements to the
page are under way, with
three new articles on (1) outright charitable gifts,
(2) charitable remainder trusts and (3) private
foundations.
- Simple
Excel MRD Spreadsheet Under the New Regs
- Annotated
IRA Beneficiary Form
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Annotated
Trust Provisions for IRA & QP
Benefits
- Annotated
Form Will and Living
Trust
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Annotated
Crummey Trust
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Hot
Topics in Estate Planning For Distributions From QPs and
IRAs
For more on What's New, go to the
What's
New page.
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Note on the
format: The brown navigation tabs at the top of
each main page represent the first level below the home page.
Each separate page generally has tabs below these which will
take you to other pages on the same level as the
organizational tree. If you get lost, use your browsers
"back" button, or press one of the "Home"
tabs. The blue tabs on the left represent popular
destinations, many of which are below the first level, but
which I thought I would try to make handy for you.
For the philosophically
inclined, I hope you will visit a new website I have created. I intend for this site to foster a discussion of
philosophy (particularly ethics and philosophy of
mind), literature, poetry, and related topics. (I
read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.)
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I hope that you get enough
benefit out of this website to make the effort I
expended to maintain it worthwhile. If occasionally
I pick up a new client or two as a result, maybe
the effort will be a benefit to all concerned. See
Robert
Wright, Nonzero.
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I will be adding articles to this website and otherwise changing
and updating it periodically.
The primary reason for setting up this site is because I
frequently receive requests for articles I have written, primarily in
the area of estate planning for distributions from IRAs and qualified
plans, and I needed a central location to make these materials
available.
Navigating. Most
items that are underlined are linked to something else that can be reached by
clicking the link. You can return back to where you were by hitting the
navigation arrow on your browser. On most pages there is a picture of an ice
berg in the left hand column, with the notation that clicking on it will always
bring you home. It should, if the program is working properly.
Downloading and Viewing Articles.
A link with a suffix "*.doc" means clicking it will put a MS Word document
somewhere on your computer (probably in your download folder). Ditto for "*.rtf"
except the document will be in rtf format, which means that almost any word
processing program can open it. "*.htm" or "*.html" should open a document for
viewing. Sometimes, I just use a button for you to click on, with the same
result, except that it is more trouble for me to program. Note that I almost always have at least two versions of each document. One
is in Word 2002 and the other is in
HTML. The HTML (often indicated by a *.htm
suffix) version can be viewed on screen. (You may have to use the back
button on your browser to get back to where you were after viewing an html
version of a document.) If you want to download it in MS Explorer, simply
go to File (far left at the top of your standard Explorer tool bar), pull down
and click save. Tell it where you want to save it (I like desktop most of the
time). You can then double click on it and view it in your browser (Explorer or
Netscape). Alternatively, you can open it directly from within Word. Hopefully,
you could do the same with Word Perfect. Clicking on the
Word 2002 (often indicated by a
*.doc suffix) version of a document will send the document, formatted and all
directly to your computer.
In some cases, I have used (in addition to .doc and .html, the RTF
and PDF formats. I am phasing these out, because of the time and
space it they take. Everyone should be able to open the HTML versions
without leaving the browser. I use Word 2002, so that version should
be the same as what I use in my office. However, I can generally find
no difference between the Word 2002 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 2002 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 or RTF, and since they are taking up space on the site (which is
already quite large), I am phasing out most RTF and PDF versions. 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 html version. Downloading an
RTF version is the same as for Word, as described above. PDF versions are easily
saved for downloading, but don't convert easily.
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. Note that the zipped version may not be as current as the
individual components.
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.
The Bio section lists articles I have written,
many of which are not yet on the website. I cannot possibly post them
all, but if there is one you are interested in, e-mail me and I will
e-mail you a copy or post it. I have already added a dozen or so
articles and guides of my own authorship, and intend to add a couple
of dozen more over the next several months.
Another reason for this web site is to give helpful information
(as opposed to legal advice) to the general public about the subject
of estate planning. Therefore, this site will have both technical
materials, primarily for the benefit of other lawyers and C.P.A.s, as
well as general information for the layperson.
All the materials on this site that I have authored are
copyrighted by me. The materials are not meant to be relied upon, but
are published for discussion purposes only.
Rule 7.04(b) disclosures. (1) Noel
C. Ice is solely responsible for the content of this
webpage. (2) Noel C. Ice was Board
Certified in Estate Planning and Probate Law by the Texas
Board of Legal Specialization in 1983, and has been
continuously certified ever since. Noel C. Ice is not
certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in any
other area. RESULTS OBTAINED DEPEND ON THE FACTS OF EACH
CASE. EVERY CASE IS DIFFERENT. SIMILAR RESULTS MAY NOT BE
OBTAINED IN YOUR CASE. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF
FUTURE RESULTS.
My
Personal (non business) Home Page is http://home.earthlink.net/~teleice/index.htm
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