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Estate planning is an important and everlasting gift you can give your family. And setting up a smooth inheritance isn't as hard as you might think.

The first reading of a Will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations' love to the deceased.

Where there is a will there is a lawsuit.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position.

I want to be clear here: It does not matter what you say in your will or trust; the beneficiary document attached to your IRA accounts and your life insurance policy overrides what you say elsewhere. If you want to change the beneficiary, you must change the beneficiary document.

We're going after the possibilities of tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud. We're going to look at this stuff very closely. We have the jurisdiction, we have the resources, and we have the will.

A revocable living trust allows your heirs to avoid probate entirely and keeps you in complete control of your finances while you're alive. You can always make changes to what's in the trust and to how you'd ultimately like it managed or disbursed.

The will is what matters - as long as you have that, you are safe.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

I have issues with inheritance tax, particularly coming from a migrant family. My dad has worked incredibly hard all his life, so it seems odd to me that someone who has gone through that experience and has managed to save then gets taxed for dying.