Estate planning clients often seem to hold the misconception that once they have completed their estate plan, they are done. Nothing left to do but wait until they need to use it. Of course, for some, that “use it” date does not arrive for many, many years. In the interim, everything has changed, rendering their once state-of-the-art estate plan ineffective at best or harmful at worst. If you have a trust-based estate plan that was designed prior to a major change in estate tax law in 2012, ...
Time For A Do-Over
Estate planning is not a “one and done” affair. Over time, your estate plan gets stale due to change in law, change in family, change in assets, and change in attitudes. Is it time for you to have an estate planning do-over? If you haven’t reviewed your estate plan in the past few years, it is time for you to re-think your plan. And be warned: if you have a pre-2013 estate plan, it may actually cause more harm than good in the current post-ATRA environment, especially if you have a classic ...
Myth Busting: Portability Does Not Eliminate Need For Good Trust-Based Planning, But It Does Change It
There seems to be a myth circulating on the Internet created by changes in the estate taxation rules from the American Tax Relief Act of 2012 (“ATRA”): that because of “portability,” there is no longer a need for the “traditional” A-B Trust planning. Although I agree with that statement for some couples, there are many groups of people for whom this advice is woefully inadequate. (Sorry in advance — this is long and kind of dense. If you don’t want to read the details, my point is that good ...
