Peace and Joy. Those twin themes ring loudly during this happy season. It’s a good time to remind ourselves that through our work as estate planning professionals, we have a gift to share and with it, a measure of peace to the clients and families we serve.

I’ll admit to some real surprise when I learned how frequently our Supreme Court reached unanimous decisions in their last session – nearly two-thirds of the time. Hard to believe that disparate bunch could find so many things to agree on, but in case after case they did. And Clark v. Rameker was one of them.

In the wake of their unanimous decision, inherited IRAs have been stripped of their protective status under bankruptcy law and are now open – naked, shivering and vulnerable to the claims of creditors.

"Per stirpes," "by representation," and "per capita at each generation" are all descriptors that tell the reader how to allocate a gift among a person's descendants. They are not shorthand for contingent beneficiary provisions. (While this discussion applies to all three, I will use per stirpes for the rest of this blog.)