The american legal system is catered to one principal:

if you owe your bank $10 that's your problem, if you owe your bank $10 billion dollars, that is your banks' problem.

This is why salespeople and scammers flourish in america: get enough loans and debt and you can uno reverse any monetary problem here but often rich people and bullshit artists are the only ones who have enough collateral to get that kind of debt.

The courts are designed to take a lifetime to figure that kind of stuff out - it keeps going as long as you have money. This is why republicans are obsessed with the estate tax: if you pass it on to your kids before the scam gets sorted out, all the ill gotten gains are laundered. Your kids are set for life and all the people you conned foot the bill.

It also shows how much a high estate tax would cripple these incentives.