If you're in that position that you know you're going to spend the money anyway, you're far better off to pay it now and relieve yourself of the risk of dying in that interim period and paying a significant tax rate on that.

Private Letter Ruling is where somebody requests a ruling from the IRS on a particular set of facts as they apply to them. The IRS rules with respect to that particular situation, but that does not have binding effect on everybody's situation.

To the extent that it pushes all your other assets over those thresholds, now you're paying a 50 percent tax.

So if a child's currently in school you just simply write a tuition check directly to the school as opposed to giving it to the child and have the child write it to the school. This is an exemption to the $12,000 number.

Any money they will owe us came as a direct result of the bankruptcy action. Because we're still negotiating what that amount is, we can't provide a number.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.