There is perhaps no greater culmination to a Hollywood film career than being honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars. Just ask this year’s recipient, Francis Ford Coppola. But after all that hard work in Hollywood, all the false starts (“One From the Heart,” anyone?) as well as the successes (too many to name, but I’d have to go with “Captain EO”), the accolades and the press, and a daughter following in her father’s large footsteps, turns out Coppola might have been better off making his fortune another way, at least when it comes to paying estate taxes (good thing he has that winery).
As an estate planning lawyer, I can confirm that Benjamin Franklin was right about the only things certain in life being death and taxes. Inevitably, I must inform clients who start sentences with the phrase “if I die …” that it really ought to be “when I die.” (Apologies to those readers who are offended by my morbidity. You may replace the word “die” in the sentence above with the death-related euphemism of your choice. For celebrities, I suggest “go to that great Starwagon in the sky.”) And taxes are no less inevitable: As the law stands, even those lucky authors who come up with an immensely successful creative work (screenplay, television series, book, song, etc.) and have the good sense to transfer ownership of it during their lifetimes can still get hit with an estate tax bill on their copyrights when they die.
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