[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Here are two more links - one written by the President of the National > Newspaper Association that talks about the estate tax generally and the > Defender specifically: > > http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=2890&SID=1039 > > and one from Editor & Publisher > > http://www.targetmarketnews.com/EandPstory.htm > > Neither one of these is inherently religious or political as far as I can > tell. One mentions a gag order, so I'm wondering, was your office > involved with this specifically? Any public information on how the taxes > got paid? Or is the 3 or 4 million dollar tax bill referred to in these > articles nonexistent? >
Again, the original assertion was that the Defender was in bankruptcy court, was was as I said simply untrue. The place that the estate tax has in the probate case is a matter of trust interpretation, or breaking the trust. Notice in the second article that a purchase offer was made which does not include all available properties... the point at which the Defender is sold is what actuates where the estate tax may come in. A part of the contention of some of the family was that the trust was set up poorly and should be broken because Northern mismanaged and proper trust establishment or management would have avoided estate tax at this generation of passing. In the alternative, it was argued that a purchase of all of the assets of the Defender would allow payment of all taxes due; it was the offer to purchase a part of the assets that left other debts unpaid, including tax. Not dealt with is in a properly managed estate, there might have been tax due but easily payable. Part of the probate action was on mismanagement of the business to create this situation. To place the blame for the Defender on the estate tax is akin to saying the Titanic sunk because it went too fast. Yes it did, but there were a lot of other factors - at night, sailing blindly, with steel that would lack tensile strength in cold water, and of course, in an iceberg belt and then there was the iceberg, as well as bulkheads built one deck too low. To isolate one factor of so many and say this is the cause, that is what I am pointing out. This was a very complex case with many, many, many facets. Depending on which one wanted to push, to push any one factor is to distort the case. And that lawyers and others with a stake in the outcome had a reason to spin on one factor and not all the factors, well, that is how it works! thanks, Brenda, for digging further on this! Vince
