I wanted to inform you of a recent court decision that may affect your clients who own S corporations. This summer, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division determined that the characterization of funds disbursed by an S corporation to employees or shareholders should be based on whether the payments were made as remuneration for services performed.

When estate planning issues hit the news, you nearly fall asleep reading what is often a pretty tame case or legal proposal.

Call me a law nerd if you want, but I spend a lot of time thinking about legal strategies. I know my clients will thank me for it.

Here's something advisors need to consider:

Taken from a tax standpoint, would your high-networth clients be better off making large charitable contributions in 2010 or 2011?

If pipeline entrepreneur Dan Duncan had died three months earlier, his heirs would have been required to hand over half of his $9 billion estate to the U.S. government. But Duncan died of a brain hemorrhage in late March at age 77. And thanks to the one-year lapse in the federal estate tax, the businessman's family will likely receive nearly $9 billion free of tax. Forbes magazine ranked Duncan as the 74th wealthiest person in the world.

Most 18-year-olds don't have a Will, but there are several good reasons why they probably should. As advisors, you can help clients (the parents) understand the importance of planning for the unthinkable and how they can talk about it with their children.

As advisors you may occasionally have clients approach you about using online "Will kits" or software to produce estate planning documents. These kits are popular because they're cheap. However, your client risks subjecting his survivors to a bundle in legal fees to fix what often turn out to be useless documents.

The news is full of elder abuse horror stories. Many are so common they've become archetypes.

We've all heard stories of a grandmother who was swindled out of thousands of dollars for home repairs that were never made. Sometimes, the culprit is a family member. Ever hear of an aging parent whose life savings disappeared thanks to a gambling or drug addicted adult child?

As advisors, it is critical to remember that non-citizens and non-resident aliens (NRAs) are taxed radically differently than U.S. citizens.

More and more baby boomers are finding themselves making medical and financial decisions for their aging parents. Often, these decisions fall to one child while other siblings are out of the loop for reasons of distance or other responsibilities.

But some families have a lot of leaders — or at least they have a lot of strong willed adult children who each have opinions on what a parent needs or doesn't need in terms of long-term care.

Financial advisors have long touted to clients the benefits of buying long-term care insurance. While the recession has possibly motivated clients to listen to these benefits more than ever, they aren't new.

What is new is who clients are buying long-term care insurance for — their parents.