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 significant exposure to estate taxes, do not now cause unintended consequences.
One such consequence of old wills and revocable trusts may be the unnecessary establishment and funding at death of a ‘Family Trust.’ Wills and revocable trusts with these type trust provisions were very common between 2000 and 2009. Wills and revocable trusts with these type trust provisions usually featured a ‘formula clause’ that provided for the year of death estate tax exclusion amount of assets to be placed and held in a ‘Family Trust’ until the surviving spouse died.
Welcome back to the future of estate planning