Oil Tycoon’s Nephew Claims Tax Moves Were to Protect Her Assets

The great-nephew of an oil entrepreneur says he acted to protect her, not avoid taxes, when he transferred her assets to a trust he controlled shortly before her death.

Bryan Milner told the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that he was trying to avoid elder abuse schemes when he transferred $17 million of Anne Milner Fields’ assets to an entity he created eight weeks before her 2016 death. The “multiple significant and legitimate non-tax-related reasons” for the financial moves were unfairly discounted by the US Tax Court, and weren’t a scheme to avoid tax, Milner said in ...