Website
designed by Steven J. Oshins (soshins@oshins.com
) Last
updated on 07-30-2006
ABOUT OUR FIRM
We are a
nationally known estate planning and asset protection firm
based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of our clients live
outside of Nevada and are referred to us by other attorneys,
life insurance agents, financial planners, accountants and
trust companies. We also obtain a significant amount of
our clients through this website since the website has been
the most visited "Estate Planning and Probate" web site in all
of North America for a number of years according to Alexa.com,
an Amazon.com company that tracks website visitors. We
are very proud of that achievement, and we believe it is a
combination of our national exposure and reputation, as well
as the endless advanced estate planning and asset protection
reading materials on our website.
The majority of our clients
have net worths of between $5 million and $100 million.
We have more than a hundred clients with net worths greater
than $100 million, as well as some billionaires. We also
have many clients with net worths less than $1 million,
although most of those tend to be young professionals who will
be very wealthy eventually or those with very little wealth
who are entrepreneurial and hire us to move their business
opportunities into a trust for their benefit that cannot be
reached by creditors or by a divorcing
spouse.
"Protecting & Preserving Wealth into the Next
Millennium," Trusts & Estates (Sept/Oct 1998),
co-authored by Richard A. Oshins and Steven J. Oshins. This
article was also republished in the June and July 1999 issues
of The Monthly Digest of Tax Articles. 1998 EPIC AWARD WINNER!
"Installment Sale to a Defective Trust vs. GRAT Remainder
Sale: An Economic Comparison," Trusts & Estates (June
2000), co-authored by Steven J. Oshins and Julie M. Wickett
"Asset Protection and the Spendthrift Trust,"
CCH - Estate Planning Review (Oct. 22, 2001) - Steven J.
Oshins interview. This interview was also republished in the
January-February 2002 issue of Journal of Retirement Planning.
"Scheffel v. Krueger: Using Statutory Spendthrift
Protection to Enhance Estate Planning," Asset Protection
Journal (Summer 2002), co-authored by Christopher M. Riser and
Steven J. Oshins
"The
GRAT Remainder Sale,"Trusts & Estates (Dec. 2002),
co-authored by David A. Handler and Steven J. Oshins
"Advanced Planning Strategies Using Grantor Trusts," New
York University 60th Institute of Federal Taxation 2002,
Chapter 27, authored by Richard A. Oshins
"The Inheritor's Trustsm: The Art of Properly Inheriting
Property," Estate Planning, Vol. 30, Nos. 9 and 10 (Sept. and
Oct. 2003), co-authored by Richard A. Oshins and Noel C. Ice
"Trust a Trust: The Benefits of Using
Beneficiary-Controlled Trusts," Trust & Investments
(Nov./Dec. 2003), co-authored by Rozlyn L. Anderson and
Richard A. Oshins
* "GLOBAL INVESTING: Taking cover from potential
dangers," Financial Times, January 3, 2002
* "NBC News - Interview of Steven J. Oshins on Nevada's
Rule Against Perpetuities Legislative Bill," Video clip of CBS
news report, October 21, 2002
* "GRATs Give Wealthy a Way To Avoid Taxes on Their
Estate," Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2002
* "Pinned Down - The sinking stock market and recent IRS
actions have put installment sales to grantor trusts on shaky
ground," Bloomberg Wealth Manager, March 3, 2003
* "Building Your Own Dynasty," Wall Street Journal,
September 15, 2004
Megatrusts are Hot, Single Generation Trusts are Not
May 2, 2001 --- The Law Offices of
Oshins & Associates has continued to develop its Megatrust
business. The first Megatrust was created in the late
1980s. Since that time, more and more people all over
the country have hired Oshins & Associates to create these
beneficiary controlled dynasty trusts for their
families. Richard A. Oshins, who created the first
Megatrust along with Jonathan G. Blattmachr, said, "When
Jonathan and I put this together many years ago, we knew it
was going to be big. But we had no idea that it would be
as big as it has gotten." Richard's son and law partner,
Steven J. Oshins, added, "The life insurance agents all over
the country want us to draft Megatrusts to own the life
insurance policies for their clients. And estate
planning attorneys all over the country are bringing us in on
big cases to do the documents. It's been
incredible!"
Meanwhile, more attorneys are
recommending dynasty trusts and finally starting to realize
how bad single generation trusts are. Why would the
trust scrivener intentionally draft a trust that makes
outright distributions to the children at ages 25 and 30 when
it is possible to use a Megatrust which names each child as
his or her own controlling trustee upon reaching such
age? Giving the primary beneficiary the functional
equivalent of outright ownership using a beneficiary
controlled Megatrust protects the trust assets from divorce,
creditors and estate taxes. Steven J. Oshins noted, "I
can't tell you how many times I've explained this to a
potential client in which the potential client responded, 'Why
would anybody NOT opt to use the trust?'"
January 25, 2003 --- In an article
titled "Counting Gifts", published in the January 2003 issue
of Trusts & Estates magazine, Martha Britton Eller, senior
economist, Estate and Gift Tax, Statistics of Income Division,
Internal Revenue Services, reports the results of an IRS study
based on gifts made in 1997. The most notable statistic
in the article is that, excluding simple trusts for a single
beneficiary and split interest trusts, only 12.5% of gifts
were made in trust, and an unbelievable 68.6% of gifts were
made outright! [Full Story]
March 5, 2003 --- In a column published
on July 19, 2000, Bruce Bartlett, Senior Fellow, National
Center for Policy Analysis, reported that the estate tax has
already been repealed three times and then brought back.
This is interesting in light of the discussions by President
Bush about "permanently" repealing the estate tax.
The first estate tax was enacted in
1797. It was repealed in 1801. The second estate
tax was enacted in 1862. It was repealed in 1870.
The third estate tax was enacted in 1898. It was
repealed in 1902. The fourth estate tax was enacted in
1916 and is still in existence. [Full Story]
The attorneys at Oshins &
Associates believe that there will not be a repeal.
Rather, there will be an increase in the amount of estate tax
exemption. Regardless, there will be an increased focus
on dynasty trusts since there will always be a need for
protecting assets from creditors and divorce.
December 23, 2003 --- Alexa.com, an
Amazon.com company that tracks visitors to web sites in
thousands of categories, currently lists https://www.oshins.com as the most visited 'Estate Planning and
Probate' web site in North America out of 488 web sites in
that category on the Internet. This category can be
accessed by clicking this link. Attorney Richard Oshins noted, "The Internet is
the wave of the future, and the future is now." Attorney
Steve Oshins added, "The key to a successful web site is
content, content and more content!" The attorneys at Oshins
& Associates have made this web site more than just a
marketing tool. It's also a research tool for estate
planning and asset protection professionals.
December 29, 2003 (EDS) -- EstateDoc
Systems, LLC announced today that it has secured the
endorsement of Steven J. Oshins Enterprises, LLC. Steven J.
Oshins is a well-known, widely published estate planning
attorney with the Law Offices of Oshins & Associates, P.C.
in Las Vegas, Nevada. [Full Story at EstateDoc Systems, LLC's web
site]
March 31, 2004 (EDS) -- Oshins &
Associates is pleased to announce that Robert L. Moshman, a
columnist for The Estate Analyst, has authored an article in
its March, 2004 issue called "New Strategies, 2004" in which
he features the Inheritor's TrustTM (a trademark
held by Richard A. Oshins, Steven J. Oshins and Noel C. Ice).
The Moshman article provides that "...[t]he Inheritor's
TrustTM is just in time and may end up becoming the
paradigm of 21st century planning." [Full Article at FinancialCounsel.com's web
site]
March 27, 2006 (EDS) -- Steven J. Oshins was featured today
in an article/interview in the Las Vegas Review Journal in a
story written by well-known writer Jennifer Robison called Estate-planning lawyer succeeds by helping
clients protect their wealth (click link for entire
story). Steven J. Oshins stated, "I am honored
to have been selected to be featured in this article.
Although I am constantly quoted in The Wall Street Journal,
Bloomberg Wealth Manager, Forbes and other well respected
national journals, being written up in our local newspaper
is different. I received over a hundred emails and
phone calls the day the story came
out.
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Dynasty Trust
QUESTION 1a: Assuming a 50% estate tax and an after-tax
investment return of 7.2%, and assuming your child outlives
you by thirty years, if you transfer $1 million to a single
generation trust in which the trust terminates when your child
turns thirty, how much has your estate planning advisor cost
your grandchild by failing to advise you to use a beneficiary
controlled generation-skipping trust (i.e., a trust for your
child and his/her descendants that is controlled by the child
and is estate tax protected, asset protected and divorce
protected)?
ANSWER 1a: $4 million. $1 million growing at 7.2% per year
becomes $8 million after thirty years. Using a single
generation trust, the IRS gets $4 million and your grandchild
gets $4 million. Using a generation-skipping trust, your
grandchild gets the entire $8 million.
QUESTION 1b: Assuming
the same facts as in QUESTION 1 above, does the answer change
if your child is sued or gets divorced?
ANSWER 1b: Yes. Using a single generation trust, the
IRS gets $4 million and your grandchild gets anywhere from
nothing to $4 million depending upon the severity of the
lawsuit or divorce settlement. Using a
generation-skipping trust (which is divorce protected and
creditor protected), your grandchild still gets the entire $8
million.
QUESTION 1c: Why would anybody ever create a single
generation trust when they can otherwise create a beneficiary
controlled generation-skipping trust for each child (i.e., a
separate trust for each child and his/her descendants that is
controlled by the child and is estate tax protected, asset
protected and divorce protected)?
ANSWER 1c: We can only speculate that the person must
really dislike his or her descendants. [If you can come
up with a better answer to this question, please email it to
soshins@oshins.com.]
Nevada Asset Protection
Trust
QUESTION 2: There are only seven states that allow
self-settled asset protection trusts (i.e., asset protection
trusts in which the grantor can be a beneficiary). Those
states are Nevada, Alaska, Delaware, Rhode Island, South
Dakota, Missouri and Utah. Of the seven states,
Nevada generally requires only a two-year waiting period for
the asset protection, Utah generally requires a three-year
waiting period, and the others generally require a
four-year waiting period. Which of the seven states has
the most favorable rules for protecting your assets?
[Select only one answer.]
(a) Nevada because it has the shortest
waiting period to obtain the asset protection;
(b) Alaska because it just seems fairer
to the creditor to give him/her an opportunity to take more of
your hard-earned assets
(c) Delaware because [see
Alaska]
(d) Rhode Island because [see
Alaska]
(e) Utah because [see
Alaska]
(f) South Dakota because [see
Alaska]
(g) Missouri because [ see
Alaska]
ANSWER 2: Nevada. This is an easy one! No
explanation is needed.
Copyright 1995-2006 by Steven J. Oshins. All rights
reserved.