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A recent experience shows how problems can occur with guns and estates.  I was involved in this. My involvement occurred 27 years ago. In 1990, an elderly relative wanted expert advice on obtaining a firearm. Her husband had recently died. She wanted to have a gun in the house, and wasn't comfortable with pistols. She was already frail and did not have much upper body strength. I recommended a .22 semi-auto, which she could keep handy. She could keep the chamber unloaded. It would be easy to charge and put into firing condition. The Brazilian copy of the Remington...

Jerry Lewis certainly got in the last laugh when it came to his strained relationship with his children. According to his Last Will and Testament, provided to PEOPLE by The Blast, the funnyman emphatically cut out all six children he had with his first wife Patti Palmer — meaning they will [inherit] nothing.

I am a named beneficiary along with 4 other siblings of my mother's Pruco Securities non-qualifying Command account. My mother passed away on July 19th.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A legal battle has erupted over the estate of former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson. That legal battle comes in the former of a lawsuit filed late Tuesday by Thompson's two adult sons -- nine months after the death of the actor turned politician. In the complaint, sons Tony and Dan Thompson question a flurry of changes to their father's estate in the days before his death back in November.

Parents of grown children, please sit down. I have some harsh news for you. Your kids don't want your stuff. Don't take it personally. It's not that they don't love you. They don't love your furniture. The china hutch, the collectible figurines, your antique map or thimble collection, the sideboard, all those family treasures may hold many precious moments for you, but for your kids, not so much. Ouch. Yes, I know you think you're being generous. Yes, I know you paid good money for these things. Yes, I know kids can seem unappreciative. Yes, I know it was part...

Consider the plight of Shari Redstone, the daughter of the billionaire media mogul Sumner Redstone. Much of her family's fortune is tied to the ailing 92-year-old Mr. Redstone. He owns 80 percent and she owns 20 percent of National Amusements, the private business that controls two giant media companies -- Viacom and CBS. Upon Mr. Redstone's death, his interest passes to a trust with his grandchildren as beneficiaries. But Mr. Redstone hardly set the stage for an orderly transition. He stubbornly held on so long as executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom that shareholders began to question his ability...

If you were wealthy and your first child was just born, what would be the first thing you would do? Give away all your money so your child would get almost nothing, right? Well, that's the decent parental instincts of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who penned an open letter to his newly born daughter telling her that she would never, ever see 99% of the 45 Facebook billion dollars he had made. His daughter Max will surely appreciate his noble gesture. Instead, he plans to give it all to his charitable foundation, I mean his LLC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In...

Sometimes, at a most solemn moment, a most irreverent thought shoots through the mind. When I heard that the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, my thought was "I wonder what the estate tax lawyers will make of it?" How about advising a terminally ill widowed grandma to marry her much-beloved granddaughter at the deathbed? Won't the estate pass to the surviving spouse intact? I'm not a lawyer, but I think it will -- without IRS getting the bite out of it as would happen now. And it would be very hard to have a sound legal argument against such...

Class warriors on the left argue that the United States should be more like Sweden, and we agree: Senate Republicans should move forward with a plan to repeal the inheritance tax, which the House passed Thursday. Sweden had an inheritance tax for 110 years, and though the rate was sometimes quite high, the tax never became an important source of revenue. In the United States, the hated death tax produces only a fraction of a percentage point of federal revenue, though it imposes very heavy costs on a small number of families and businesses. In Sweden, the tax provoked various...

A theme that dramas and soap operas have dwelled on is the spats people can have over what their ancestors may leave for them. Life imitates art has been my experience seeing relatives squabble over the dead carcasses, but some have taken the issue to heart in a new television series on the Fox Business Network (FBN) called Strange Inheritance. The episodes I watched did not involve fisticuffs, but they incorporate many of the same decisions that one has to confront upon the death of a loved one. First, there are the wishes of the dear departed. What did the...

Bill and Hillary are reportedly using tax advantaged strategies used by multimillionaires. Bill and Hillary Clinton are finding their way around an estate tax they have long supported, a cause they said would prevent the U.S. from being overrun by inherited wealth. The Clintons are employing a series of financial planning strategies that will help reduce the tax burden on future recipients, which can be as high as 40%, Bloomberg News reported.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times since Obama was elected – that every problem he faced as president was inherited from Bush. From Bush’s wars to Bush’s recession, every problem in America, and around the world for that matter, was all Bush’s fault. Well, what goes around comes around, and as the presidential campaign season heats up, the big question that needs to be answered by the Democratic presidential nominee will be: What problems will they be “inheriting” from Obama? For the fun of it, let’s assume Hillary wins the Democratic nomination. Just how will...

Is inherited wealth making a comeback? Yes, says Thomas Piketty, author of the best seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Inherited wealth has always been with us, of course, but Mr. Piketty believes that its importance is increasing. He sees a future that combines slow economic growth with high returns to capital. He reasons that if capital owners save much of their income, their wealth will accumulate and be passed on to their heirs. He concludes that individuals’ living standards will be determined less by their skill and effort and more by bequests they receive. To be sure, one can...

My mother and her sister inherited a substantial amount of land from my grandparents. My sister, her husband, my mother, my aunt, two of her sons, and I met with the attorneys last Friday. Despite my voiced disagreement, it was decided to pursue a "conservation easement" for the mountain land. My mother has been trying to divide the property with her sister for over 20 years, since my grandmother's death.

No inheritance for Anderson! CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who comes from the Vanderbilts, one of the wealthiest families in American history, said Monday, March 31, that he will not be receiving any fortune from his mother Gloria Vanderbilt. "My mom's made clear to me that there's no trust fund," Cooper told Howard Stern on his radio show. "There's none of that." Cooper's mom is the great-great-granddaughter of railroad and shipping mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt. Still stunning at 90 years old, the Manhattan socialite and former denim designer is reportedly worth a whopping $200 million. Gloria's equally-successful son, however, told Stern he...

Islamic law is adopted by British legal chiefs Solicitors told how to draw up Sharia-style wills penalising widows and non-believers By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 9:35PM GMT 22 Mar 2014 Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills. Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether. The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children...

Speaking on stage yesterday at the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bill and Melinda Gates gave a revealing answer to a question about how they're raising their kids with respect to money, reports Wired. The couple has enough money to make each of their three children billionaires if they should want to do so, but as they answered, that's not the plan at all. "We want to strike a balance so they have the freedom to do anything, but not sort of a lot of money showered on them so that they can go out and do nothing,"...

The roots of inheritance may extend beyond the genome, but the mechanisms remain a puzzle. When Brian Dias became a father last October, he was, like any new parent, mindful of the enormous responsibility that lay before him. From that moment on, every choice he made could affect his newborn son's physical and psychological development. But, unlike most new parents, Dias was also aware of the influence of his past experiences — not to mention those of his parents, his grandparents and beyond. Where one's ancestors lived, or how much they valued education, can clearly have effects that pass down...

The number of Americans owning pets is at a record high, and more people are making provisions in their wills to provide for these animals after they're gone. But to ensure your pet is cared for as you intend, it's important to set up a pet trust—an arrangement that 46 states permit. "Pet trusts aren't just for the wealthy," says Frances Carlisle, a trust and estates attorney in New York. For most pet owners, she adds, the goal "is to make sure a plan exists for the care of the animal." Pet trusts can take effect either after you die...

They Are Going To Make It Nearly Impossible To Pass On A Farm Or A Business To Your Children By Michael Snyder on November 20th, 2012 If you have a farm or a small business, would you like to pass it on to your children when you die? Well, unless Congress does something, it is going to become much, much harder to do that starting next year. Right now, there is a 5 million dollar estate tax exemption and anything above that is taxed at 35 percent. But on January 1st, the exemption will go down to 1 million dollars...