Michael Ben-Jacob Spoke at Estate Planning Conference
Michael Ben-Jacob, Partner in the Private Clients Department, spoke at the Estate Planning Conference — Current Approaches Impacting Estate Planning on July 13, 2010, in New York. The conference, sponsored by the Foundation for Accounting, provided CPAs, CFPs, CLUs, attorneys, and other professionals involved in estate planning, current technical and practical approaches to estate planning, including tax, financial and interpersonal considerations.
Mr. Ben-Jacob presented the session “The Language of Trusts — Jurisdictional Hazards of the English Language,” which highlighted the integration of U.S. and foreign tax considerations private client advisors must consider for increasingly international high-net-worth families that use trusts to facilitate planning. Often, the same or similar language employed in a trust agreement will be interpreted differently, depending on the law applied to the trust, with significant and sometimes drastic unintended consequences. Mr. Ben-Jacob focused on some of these differences in interpretation and the potentially negative consequences that may result.