Reciprocal Trust Doctrine

Estate planning often focuses on where property passes at death, either via a revocable trust or a last will and testament.  In some cases, however, a client may want to make gifts of property during lifetime, or they may be advised to do…

Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (“SLATs”) are ubiquitous in estate planning. As clients plan to use the exemption before it is reduced by half in 2026, the issue of access to SLAT assets is key. Those with sufficient wealth may avoid any…

The Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning is the country’s largest and leading conference for estate planners, attorneys, trust officers, accountants, financial planners, insurance advisors, and wealth management professionals. …

Each InterActive Legal practice system provides subscribers with the ability to draft at least one type of “irrevocable trust.” All systems contain the standard Irrevocable Trust, which can serve multiple purposes, and will be the primary…

Year-end tax planning for 2022 is different from prior years. Practitioners might recommend traditional annual gift planning but for some (perhaps many) clients, annual gifts may not be worthwhile.

This video clip discusses the reality of SLATs and how to use them successfully.

Asset protection planning remains vital for many if not most clients. For the past few years, clients have been hyper-focused on planning for tax changes that have not happened, practitioners should re-focus clients on the importance of…

With the federal estate and gift tax exemption poised to drop dramatically in 2026, if not sooner, a popular strategy for using the high exemption before it drops involves creating a trust for the grantor’s spouse.  Such a trust is…

Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (“SLATs”) planning can provide tremendous planning benefits for many married clients. They may well be the most popular technique to plan for married clients (and others) in 2020.

Many married individuals adopt an estate plan designed to avoid estate tax on the death of the first spouse to die while taking maximum advantage of the so-called unified credit (also known as the applicable exclusion amount).