Monday, October 20, 2014

“The Father of Estate Planning"

Give a birthday shout-out to Charles Ives, the American composer born 140 years ago, October 20, 1874. Life insurance was Ives' day job, and when the federal estate tax came along, he realized there was a better way to sell insurance than to ask, "How much do you love your wife?"

The photo below shows Ives in 1913, the year the federal income tax was introduced. The federal estate tax followed in 1916, and two years later his most noted nonmusical work appeared: "Life Insurance with Relation to Inheritance Tax."


2 comments:

Jim Gust said...

I heard Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question" last Saturday at the Norwalk Symphony.

Jim Gust said...

I did not care for it. I trust Ives was better at estate planning than he was at composing.