An excerpt from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/08/how-the-1-billion-kennedy-family-fortune-defies-death-and-taxes-3/#126ba756238d http://www.f

An excerpt from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/08/how-the-1-billion-kennedy-family-fortune-defies-death-and-taxes-3/#126ba756238d http://www.forbes.com/sites/carlodonnell/2014/07/08/how-the-... "Joseph P. Kennedy’s choice to place his fortune in trusts is possibly the single most critical reason why the family wealth is still around today. The most obvious benefit was to protect the fortune from the prying fingers of ne’er-do-well heirs, said Laurence Leamer, who wrote three Kennedy biographies. Trusts often prevent beneficiaries from tapping more than 10 percent of principal, said Rick Kruse, principal at Kruse and Crawford, which offers estate management advice. The trusts also protect the family assets from another set of prying fingers: Uncle Sam’s. By holding assets in so called “dynasty trusts,” which are passed from heir to heir for decades, if not longer, the Kennedy family fortune is largely insulated from the estate tax, Kruse said. Handled correctly, a dynasty trust could potentially maintain an un-taxable fortune indefinitely. The oldest Kennedy trust on record dates back to 1936."