ABA Wealth Advisory and Personal Trust Advisory Series
Section Descriptions

ABA Fiduciary and Trust Activities Workbook

Section I:  Trust and Probate Law and Custom – explains the legal basics regarding the creation of a trust and types of trusts.  The basic laws regarding the administration of a trust by a fiduciary are explained.

Section II:  Investment Responsibilities of a Trustee – explores the trustee's responsibility for investing trust assets.  Included is a discussion of the new modern portfolio theory of investing.

Section III:  Environmental Law – provides an overview of federal environmental laws and how they apply in a trust or other fiduciary setting. 

Section IV:  Ethics – explains the duties a trustee owes to the beneficiaries of the trust.

ABA Financial Planning Workbook

Section I:  Personal Finance – deals with the broad issue of managing money.  It involves strategies for the accumulation and distribution of wealth in order to meet long-term goals and objectives.

Section II:  Life Insurance – focuses on how life insurance protects against a loss of income resulting from the insured's death.  Topics include types of life insurance, how to determine life insurance requirements, and life insurance management.

Section III:  Other Types of Insurance – explains disability insurance for individuals and businesses, long-term care insurance, medical insurance, property insurance, vehicle insurance, and liability insurance.

Section IV:  Retirement Planning – describes the importance of an ongoing savings plan to attain a state of financial independence at some point in the future. Topics covered include capital adequacy, investment strategies, methods of accumulating wealth, and, methods of distributing wealth.

Section V:  Estate Planning – explains the eventual disposition of wealth either during lifetime through a planned gift program or at death through testamentary disposition.

Section VI:  Ethics—deals with the issue of professional ethics and is intended to provide a perspective on the proper conduct of financial planning in client relationships.

ABA Investment Management Workbook

Section I:  Economics and Markets – provides the basic tools essential to understanding how the economy and financial markets work.

Section II:  Equity Markets, Debt Markets, and Portfolio Management – presents an analysis of debt and equity markets and valuation techniques for debt and equity securities.  Also included are the fundamentals of portfolio management and the Capital Asset Pricing Model. 

Section III:  Alternative Investments—introduces alternative investment vehicles used by investment professionals to describe investments that have patterns of expected risk and return that are believed to be different than those of traditional, long-only, market traded securities.  Primary categories of alternative investments discussed include hedge funds; private equity; and real estate.

Section IV:  Investment Polity – covers the process of developing an investment policy by determining client objectives and risk tolerances to constructing and monitoring an appropriate portfolio.

Section V:  Performance Measurement and Evaluation – explains investment performance, measuring risk and return and establishing appropriate benchmarks.

Section VI:  Ethical and Legal Consideration—topics covered include insider information, conflicts of interest, prudent man and prudent expert standards, self dealing, equal treatment of accounts and soft dollar commitments.

ABA Tax Law and Tax Planning Workbook

Section I:  Overview of the Current Tax Laws – provides an overview of the current tax laws

Section II:  Individual Income Tax – explains the computation of individual income tax, employee Benefits Plan distributions, exclusions, deductions, passive activities, AMT, types of credits, and estimated taxes.

Section III:  Income Taxation of Fiduciaries – describes grantor trust rules, taxation of trust income, allocation between and among trusts and beneficiaries, distributions, basis, gain and loss, and IRD.

Section IV:  Income Taxation and Charitable Entities – explores the types of charitable entities, taxation of distributed income, split interest trusts, taxation of a private foundation, and income tax deductions for charitable contributions.

Section V:  Federal Estate Taxation – covers current estate tax, valuation situations, deductible expenses, taxes and losses, state death taxes, marital deduction, charitable deduction, credits and liability.

Section VI: Federal Gift Tax – describes transactions subject to current gift tax, annual exclusion and applicable exclusions, gift splitting, marital deduction, charitable deduction, computation of tax, and tax liabilities.

Section VII:  Generation Skipping Transfer Tax – describes GST, exemptions, computing the tax, provisions, and tax liabilities.

Section VIII:  Planning for Gifts—explores annual exclusion gifts, gifts to minors, Crummey trusts, removing appreciation from the estate, removing gift tax from the estate, income shifting, and other gifting techniques.

Section IX:  Planning for Credit Shelter and Marital Trusts—explains the marital deduction, marital trusts, provisions, estate plan for spouses, selecting the trustee and marital formula.

Section X:  Effective Planning for GST—covers goals in planning for transfers, effective use of the GST exemption, funding bequests, unique techniques for leveraging the GST, and preserving and protecting grandfathered trusts.

Section XI:  Postmortem Planning – identifies income in respect of a decedent, deductible expense options, timing of distributions, realization of gains, providing for estate liquidity, and use of disclaimers.

Section XII:  Planning for Retirement Benefits – includes tax treatments of qualified benefits and IRAs, payout rules, estate plan coordination, preserving spousal rollovers, excise tax on early/late distributions, gift tax and retirement benefits, life insurance, self employed individuals, Roth IRAs, and tax deferred annuities.

Section XIII:  Estate Planning for the Closely Held Business – explains the integration of estate planning and business succession planning, direct lifetime gifts, capital structure devices, buy-sell agreements, value-shifting techniques, deferral of estate tax, FLPs and ESOPs.

Section XIV:  Ethical Considerations—explains fiduciary duties, duties of loyalty and impartiality, investments unauthorized practice of law and crossing state lines.