Wills

Most estate planners draft Wills as a regular part of their services.  For some, it’s always a simple “pour-over” Will intended to accompany a funded Revocable Trust, with the trust document containing the estate plan.  Other planners do…

What are the most popular documents in InterActive Legal? It’s an interesting question, and one we consider frequently as we work to bring our subscribers the most useful drafting resources. We could take a survey and the results would…

Four states now permit (or will in 2020) some version of an “electronic will,” and the Uniform Electronic Wills Act drafted earlier this year is likely to bring the concept to other states sooner rather than later. It appears inevitable…

This presentation will cover drafting options for specific bequests in a Will, revocable trust or joint revocable trust. We will discuss options for gifts of tangible personal property, including a memorandum approach, general gifts, and…

2009 will represent a watershed year for estate planners and their clients due to the increase in estate and generation-skipping tax exemptions to $3,500,000.

In the 2001 Tax Act (known as EGTRRA), many changes were made to the estate tax system including increasing the exemption for this year to $3.5 million, lowering the top rate to 45%, eliminating the state death tax credit and culminating in…

Ok, we live and learn. Jonathan has been administering estates for more than 35 years (old isn’t he?) and thought he kind of knew at least almost all there was to know about the basics of that task. But he has just learned in an estate…

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).