A trust plays a crucial role in thoughtful estate planning. You might think that the doubling of the amount exempt from federal estate and gift tax ($11.4 million per person in 2019) would reduce the need for estate planning, given that so few families will now need...

When you’re planning for retirement, American Bank & Trust can help you with things you need to know. For example, the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment has experienced its biggest bump in seven years. The last time that the Social Security cost-of-living...

The gift tax is a tax on the transfer of property by one individual to another while receiving nothing, or less than full value, in return. The tax applies whether the donor intends the transfer to be a gift or not. The gift tax applies to the transfer by gift of any...

Celebrated author and journalist Tom Wolfe died in May at the age of 88. He wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities, among many other notable works. Wolfe was survived by a wife and two children. His Will left his tangible personal...