Investor Control Dooms Private Placement Life Insurance Policy In Webber

Jeffrey T. Webber is a venture capital and private-equity fund manager. Seeking, like the rest of us, to mitigate the taxes on his investments, Webber ended up in 1998 in the offices of an estate planner by the name of William Lipkind. As the U.S. Tax Court would later relate: Mr. Lipkind laid out a complex estate plan that involved a grantor trust and the purchase of private placement life insurance policies from Lighthouse. He explained that private placement insurance is a type of variable li...