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Few states have inheritance taxes any more, but Iowa still does. A recent court case there illustrates that the Iowa law has a strange provision.

A handful of states have an inheritance tax either in addition to or instead of a state estate tax.

Inheritance taxes are similar to estate taxes. With an estate tax, the estate itself is taxed before distribution to people. With an inheritance tax it is the tax is assessed on the people inheriting the estate.

Iowa is one of the states with an inheritance tax. However, it has an exemption for the tax when it comes to children who inherit from their parents. However, Iowa changed that exemption...

Bill Gates has called for a new approach to combating Alzheimer's disease and announced that he is contributing money to the cause.

It is a well-established fact among researchers: the earlier that Alzheimer's disease can be detected and diagnosed, the better it is for the patient.

It is possible to slow the pace of the disease somewhat, if detected early enough. Early detection also gives patients time to adapt and make plans for how they will handle the disease. These plans include getting legal paperwork, like powers of attorney and estate plans, in place while they still can.

However, figuring out how to detect Alzheimer's early has...

As the world becomes more globalized, courts are having to sort out sometimes messy conflicts between the estate laws of different cultures. A recent example comes out of Switzerland.

More and more people today are interacting and marrying people from different countries and cultures. They also are choosing to hold their assets in nations, where they do not live.

All of this can create problems when the laws of one nation conflict with the policies of another.

Recently, a court in Switzerland was asked to recognize a receipt of inheritance decision made by a court in Egypt, under its version of Sharia law.

The estate was that of an...

People would like to know how much money they need to have in their accounts, before they can consider retiring. That is not always an easy question to answer.

How much folks need to save for retirement depends on several different factors. One important factor is what they plan to do during retirement.

For example, people who would like to take a lot of vacations will likely need to have more money than those who are not interested in doing that.

One large retirement nest egg number that gets thrown around a lot is $1 million. It is a nice round number and it seems like a lot to most people.

However, even a number that large might not be...

If a trustee is removed from his or her duties, the former trustee usually turns over any assets he holds to the new trustee as quickly as possible. However, there are exceptions to that rule.

Marsha Sinzheimer and her late husband had created a trust for her benefit. The trust documents required that there should be co-trustees, one a corporate trustee and one an individual trustee.

Sinzheimer's son Andrew was appointed to take over as the individual trustee. However, before the former individual trustee stepped down, he exercised his authority to remove the corporate trustee and did not name another one.

When Andrew took over, he...