by Arthur Geffen | Jan 3, 2011 | Estate Planning, Estate Planning Solutions
Until recently lawyers routinely cautioned their clients that the estate tax exemption is something that belongs to each of us personally and can’t be shared. That meant spouses risked losing one of their tax-free opportunities by leaving everything to...
by Arthur Geffen | Dec 28, 2010 | Estate Planning, Estate Planning Solutions
With an AB trust, the assets in an estate of, say, $4 million would be divided half and half between A and B spouses, thus doubling up on the exclusion. However, the creators of the AB Trust had to pay a price in the form of an income tax. That, says Klueger,...
by Arthur Geffen | Dec 23, 2010 | Estate Planning, Estate Planning Solutions
The sweeping tax overhaul that President Obama signed Dec. 17, raising the exemption from federal estate tax to $5 million a person, includes a wonderful new break for widows and widowers. Starting in 2011, they can add the unused estate tax exemption of the...
by Arthur Geffen | Dec 23, 2010 | Estate Planning, Estate Tax
Estate planning attorneys will now need to meet with their existing will or revocable trust clients, or with new clients with old wills or trusts, to make sure that their existing wills or trusts, which may have been drafted during an era when there was...
by Arthur Geffen | Dec 20, 2010 | Estate Planning, Estate Planning Solutions, LGBT, LGBT Issues
Until the time comes when same sex marriages are recognized under state and federal laws in the same way as heterosexual marriages, same sex couples need to take estate planning seriously. Why? Because without an estate plan, in most places same sex couples...
by Arthur Geffen | Dec 20, 2010 | Estate Planning, Estate Planning Solutions, Estate Tax
OK, get ready because it will become available to married couples in 2011 and 2012, portability of the federal estate tax exemption between spouses. The biggest argument in support of portability is that it will prevent married couples from having to create...
